The Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme offers grant funding to support employers whose operations have been severely affected by coronavirus (COVID-19).

Firstly, if you run an NHS or mixed practice, by default you do not qualify for this funding. The NHS funding you will continue to receive is designed to be used to pay your staff at their previous levels in order to retain them for working in your practice or in other NHS settings.

Mixed practices can furlough a proportion of their staff.

Further information for NHS and mixed practices can be found here.

For private dental practices, the detailed guidance provides some clarity – here are the key points (last updated 3 November 2020):

• • The scheme is open to all employers with a PAYE scheme;
  • It will cover 80% of a furloughed employee’s wage up to £2,500 per month;
  • To qualify the employee must have been on your PAYE payroll on 30 October 2020 (new employees who started after this date do not qualify);
  • Under the flexible furlough scheme, employees will be paid for any hours they work and can be furloughed for the remainder of their contracted hours;
  • Employees currently self-isolating or on sick leave should receive statutory sick pay but can be furloughed after their sick leave period. Similarly, those employees on maternity / paternity leave can be furloughed once they are due to return to work;
  • Employees that were made redundant or placed on unpaid leave / laid-off after 30 October 2020 can be re-engaged and placed on furloughed leave and their wage costs claimed back under this scheme;
  • The amount you can claim (up to £2,500 per month) we believe will be calculated as follows:
    • • For those in receipt of a set salary, you can claim 80% of their usual salary before tax (ignoring any commission or bonus payments);
      • For those employees who are paid for the hours that they work, you can claim 80% of the higher of:
        1. The same month’s earnings from the previous year;
        2. The average monthly earnings from the 2019/20 tax year (or from when they started their employment).
  • Provided you have written consent from the employee, you can pay them 80% of their wages. However, if you choose to top-up this to their usual salary amount, no funding is available for this extra 20%.
  • Claims need to be submitted online through a portal, separately to your normal payroll submissions.
  • To claim you will need your PAYE reference number, the number of furloughed employees, the dates of your claim, the amount of the claim, individual employee details, your bank details and your contact details;
  • HMRC reserve the right to retrospectively audit any such claims;
  • Deductions for PAYE tax, employee national insurance and employee pension contributions will still be due on the employee’s earnings;
  • Any funding received will be treated as taxable income within your year-end accounts.

As you may appreciate this is a rapidly changing situation as the Government are announcing measures to help support the economy on a daily basis. Further information will be added above as and when it becomes available.

Details of additional support available can be found here.

If you have any further questions regarding paying your employees during these uncertain times, please do get in touch.