What are the responsibilities of employers under the coronavirus Test and Trace scheme?
The Government has produced workplace guidance for employers, setting out 2 key messages for employers:
- Continue to make workplaces as safe as possible; and
- Encourage workers to heed any notifications to self-isolate and to support them while they are require to isolate
Government guidance can be accessed here: How it works (an overview) and Workplace guidance for employers.
Related FAQs
An employee on Flexible Furlough can take part in volunteer work during hours which you record your employee as being on Flexible Furlough as long as it is for another employer or organisation.
To be clear, if on Flexible Furlough and you’re claiming the grant for them, then they cannot work for you.
As people work part-time and ease back into the business, this is likely going to be a key risk area. You need very clear lines as to working time and non-working time. No replying to emails on days off.
All employers have a duty to prevent illegal working, and carrying out proper Right to Work checks are a fundamental part of this. In light of Covid-19, the Home Office has brought in some temporary measures for employers to use to carry out the requisite Right to Work checks. Failure to follow these could lead to enforcement action and penalties.
If your 30-day visa to travel to the UK (vignette) has expired or is about to, you can request a replacement free of charge until the end of 2020 by contacting the Coronavirus Immigration Help Centre. This can be granted with new and extended validity dates to allow travel once you are able to.
The Government published guidelines on 23 March 2020 concerning house sales.
Estate Agents have been required to close their offices and although staff are allowed to work from home they must not attend properties for any reason.
Therefore, if the property has not yet been put onto the market you will be unable to obtain a proper valuation at present. Also, restrictions on movement means that people must not view properties in person. Therefore you ought to delay marketing.
If you have found a buyer and the property is empty then the transaction can go ahead but you may experience delays in the transaction. For example, if your buyer needs a mortgage there will be a delay in getting a mortgage offer and even if it’s a cash purchase there are likely to be delays with Local Authority Searches.
You should discuss with your conveyancer whether to include special contract conditions. These could take into account what happens if the buyer or someone in the chain falls ill between exchange and completion and cannot move on the anticipated completion date.
If you have exchanged contracts the Government guidelines indicate that the sale of an empty property can go ahead to completion. However, if the contents of the property have not been removed you may have difficulty getting it cleared. Similarly, your buyer or someone else in the conveyancing chain may find that their removers are unable to move them. If this happens, you ought to discuss this with your conveyancer and your buyer as soon as possible to see if completion can be delayed to a later date.
As the project progresses, it is important to continually monitor the contractor’s performance. Any one or more of the items below can be early warning signs that the contractor is in financial difficulty, and that further actions may be necessary:
- Decrease in labour or contractor’s personnel on site, and/or rapid turnover of contractor’s personnel
- Slowdown in progress on site
- Plant, equipment or materials suddenly disappearing from site for no apparent reason – unpaid subcontractors may unilaterally decide to remove items from site regardless of their contractual rights to do so
- An increasing number of defects and reduction in the quality of the contractor’s work
- The contractor seeking changes in the payment arrangements, and in particular early payments
- The contractor making spurious claims or contra charges
- The contractor seeking assignment of its benefit of the building contract
- Late filing of accounts by the contractor at Companies House
- Unsatisfied court judgements against the contractor
- Subcontractors and suppliers not being paid or being paid late
- Rumours in the press, in the industry, on site or elsewhere regarding the solvency of the contractor
- Unusual visits to site, for example from the contractor’s senior management or other personnel who had not previously been present or are not expected to be present
- Increasingly aggressive behaviour by the contractor
- The contractor’s parent company or another company within the contractor’s group displaying any of the above signs