News

The Chancellor revises the Winter Economy plan

The Chancellor has increased the support for jobs and workers who have been impacted by the Coronavirus pandemic.

Revised Job Support Scheme

The Job Support Scheme (JSS) and the more recently announced Job Support Scheme for Closed Businesses (JSSC) had both been under scrutiny for not helping employers enough, especially those who had not been forced to closed, but instead face restrictions on trading or suffering from the doubts of customers which have saw income levels drop significantly.

The JSS has now been revised by the Chancellor, so that employees can work less than the original third of their hours, and the employers will pay less towards unworked hours.

The original scheme seen the employers contribution to be a third of unworked hours, in addition to the hours worked. The revised scheme states only 5% of unworked hours will be paid by the employer.

The revised scheme also only requires 20% of usual hours to be worked by the employee to qualify for the scheme.

The government will now fund 62% of the wages for hours not worked. This more than doubles the maximum payment to £1,541.75 a month.

Hospitality and Leisure Business Grants

The Chancellor also announced specific help for hospitality and leisure businesses in tier two areas.

Hospitality and Leisure businesses affected by tier two restrictions will be able to apply to their Local Authority for monthly grant funding of up to £2,100.

Self Employed Income Support Scheme (SEISS)

The Chancellor has announced that the next round of the SEISS grants will be to cover 40% of profits.

As previously announced, the scheme was due to cover 20% of quarterly profits up to a cap of £1,875, but the revision to the scheme brings the maximum grant to £3,750.

This grant scheme is only available to those who were continuing to actively trade but faced reduced demand due to the Coronavirus pandemic and those who were eligible for the original SEISS, with the first round in in May 2020, and the second round in August 2020.

The third-round grant will cover the three month period from November 2020 until January 2021, while the fourth round will cover the period February 2021 to April 2021. The level of the fourth grant has not been announced at this stage.

It has not yet been released when these will be available to claim, but we will update our website once the portal is live and dates are released.