What about other Companies House filings?

• Remember that employees will also be making contributions on any reduced wage under the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme. The amount contributed may be less, but the contribution rate will be the same, unless the following applies.
• Employees may reduce their DC employee contributions if their scheme rules allow them to do so, but no further than the statutory minimum if the scheme qualifies as the employer’s auto-enrolment vehicle.
• Employees might choose to opt-out or cease active membership of their scheme, which might cause a spike in administration at a time when administrators are likely to be understaffed. It is important that employers remember they must not do anything to encourage or induce employees from leaving an auto-enrolment vehicle as this may constitute an offence.
• Employees who leave their scheme in this way will have to be re-enrolled in due course as and when required by law.
• For DB schemes, specific considerations apply (see the last section, below).

You must only make a report under RIDDOR (The Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 2013) when:

• An unintended incident at work has led to someone’s possible or actual exposure to coronavirus. This must be reported as a dangerous occurrence
• A worker has been diagnosed as having COVID 19 and there is reasonable evidence that it was caused by exposure at work. This must be reported as a case of disease
• A worker dies as a result of occupational exposure to coronavirus.

The Flexible Furlough Scheme was introduced from 1 July 2020 and is due to come to an end on 30 September 2021.

The Commission has provided guidance as to measures which Member States can introduce without notification. These include:

• Measures which apply to all businesses within a Member State (for example the furloughing measures introduced by the UK Government)
• Measures providing support direct to consumers
• Measures which are already exempt from the notification requirement (discussed further below).

To respond to the crisis the European Commission has also issued a temporary framework to provide a basis for emergency aid to be notified for approval. The framework is initially in place until 31 December 2020. The Commission continues to keep this under review and has twice widened its scope to allow more types of aid to be notified. The type of measures covered include:

• The provision of guarantees (including guarantees for 100% of loans)
• The provision of loans at low interest rates, at zero interest rates or subordinated to senior debt
• Measures to support liquidity needs or to alleviate difficulties caused by the current crisis
• Measures to recapitalise businesses
• Measures to assist sectors hit particularly hard by the current crisis (eg transport)
• Measures targeted at COVID-19 such as research and development or production of products related to tackling the virus

The Commission has approved a UK Government “umbrella” notification to allow UK public authorities to adopt the measures permitted by the Commission framework. Therefore public authorities in the UK can use the Framework without notifying individual measures or schemes to the Commission.

Employers have a statutory right to require employees to take annual leave at their direction, subject to providing staff with notice equal to at least double the length of the leave that you are directing them to take (e.g. 10 days’ notice for five days leave). However, this measure is not likely to achieve any urgent cost savings or alleviate immediate cash-flow pressure as holidays would need to be paid.

Clearly, annual leave can be taken on furlough so you could have staff on furlough and annual leave.