The date to put an employee on furlough leave for the first time expired on 10 June 2020. Therefore, it is now not possible to place an employee on furlough leave. However, the government has agreed to the request made by “Maternity Action” for parents on family-related leave to be exempted from the 10 June 2020 cut off for the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS), which enabled employers to place employees on furlough leave.
The letter sent to the Chancellor from “Maternity Action” warned that it had received many calls from women on maternity leave whose workplaces are closed, and the concern would be that having their maternity leave after the furlough scheme cut off would result in their employers being unable to place them on furlough leave (and perhaps instead have no other option but to make them redundant).
This means that any employee returning from maternity, adoption, paternity, shared parental or parental bereavement leave, will still be eligible to be placed on furlough leave even if they have not previously been furloughed by 10 June 2020, provided that their employer has used the furlough scheme for other eligible employees by that date.
For any other employees, they will still be eligible for furlough if they have previously been on furlough and would be eligible to continue until that scheme closes on 31 October 2020.
A “flexible furlough scheme” will come into force on 5 July 2020, however there are very few details available in relation to that, and we will provide a further update in relation to this once further details are provided.
Should you have any queries regarding the CJRS, your rights during furlough leave or rights returning from maternity, adoption, paternity, share parental or parental bereavement leave, please do not hesitate to contact our specialist team today.
