Can furloughed employees carry out work for another business during furlough?

The ICO is providing new guidance to organisations regarding data protection and coronavirus, which can be accessed here: https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/data-protection-and-coronavirus/

Information about the Covid-19 health status of individuals is special category data under the GDPR. This means it is high risk which has implications for how you use it, store it and keep it secure.

You will already hold health data about your employees as this is necessary to provide a safe, accessible place to work and to make reasonable adjustments to the workplace. You now need to make sure that the information you gather about your employees, visitors to your sites, customers and suppliers about Covid-19 is processed in accordance with data protection laws.

The Business and Planning Act 2020 entered the statute books on 22 July 2020. Section 18 of the Act includes provisions for the extension of the date by which a reserved matters application must be submitted where the original date falls between 23 March 2020 and 31 December 2020. Where the original time limit for the submission of reserved matters is on or after 19 August 2020, the relevant conditions will be automatically read as requiring the reserved matters application to be submitted by 1 May 2021.

Where the original time limit for the submission of reserved matters is before 19 August 2020, an application will need to be made to the LPA for an Additional Environmental Approval (“AEA”), which the LPA must determine within 28 days otherwise the approval is deemed to be provided. The purpose of the AEA is to consider whether the environmental assessments carried out at the time of the original outline determination remain valid and up to date, and where that is not the case, the AEA will be refused. In such circumstances a new planning application will be required where an application is now out of time to comply with the original date for submission of reserved matters.

Because they all have devolved governments, when there are changes to spending levels in England, the Government makes adjustments to the amount of public expenditure allotted to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.  In this case £60 million will be made available for all of the devolved administrations as a result of the £370 million funding allocated to charities in England. This is broken down as follows:

• £30 million for the Scottish Government
• £20 million for Welsh Government
• £10 million for the Northern Ireland Executive

There may be further allocations, dependent on the final projects funded, through the £360 million direct grant pot.

Under usual rules, workers are entitled to a minimum of 28 days holiday including bank holidays, each year. Except in limited circumstances, it cannot be carried between leave years meaning that workers lose their holiday if they do not take it.

The government passed emergency legislation relaxing the carry-over of the 20 days leave entitlement provided under EU law. Where it is not reasonably practicable for an employee to take leave in the relevant leave year as a result of the effects of the coronavirus then they could be entitled to carry over the untaken leave into the next year.

No, where employees cannot work from home, and it is safe for them to return to work, they should do so.