My understanding is that the 'Furlough' scheme allows employers to claim a GRANT of up to 80 percent of an employees wage up to a cap of £2,500 per month.Employers can top up the additional 20% but are under no obligation to do so.

Actually they are under an obligation to do so unless agreed with the employee. It’s technically a change of contract.

That said the alternative is generally lay off or no work, and it would take a turkey who fancies xmas dinner not to agree it!

From Gov.UK :

You can choose to top up your employee’s salary, but you do not have to.

However,I have just perused this from an article :

The Government guidance makes it clear that whilst this is up to you and will not be a requirement of the scheme itself, you need to take account of your existing legal obligations to your staff under their contracts of employment. Few contracts are drafted in a way that enables an employer to impose a pay cut unilaterally. Proceeding without explicit agreement about reducing pay also runs the risk that staff might bring deductions from wages claims, even if they appear to have accepted the furlough arrangement itself.

Edited by Willo (06 Apr 2020 10.19am)

Some good news for the future that goes against what we were thinking might happen.

That doctor Sarah is on Jeremy a one on channel 5 and she answered some callers on caring for virus sufferers. One elderly gentleman asked about elderly people having to stay in until a vaccine is in operation. She said this isn’t so. When we’re on the other side of the bell curve and that is flattening down then elderly people can go out. They will be at significantly less risk than now. Maybe not go out a lot or to unnecessary places but you should be okay to in that stage of the virus. It’s if the graph peaks again that elderly people will have to stay in again.

If all that is true then that gives some optimism might not be too far ahead. We might and probably should at this stage be selective on which flights come in and test everyone at ports and airports.

People who normally look ok look a bit rough on tv via Skype. Alastair Campbell looks like he’s aged 20 years.

COYP

Current Employment Law is not my field of expertise!

When you look at the stats around European health services Germany seem the stand out for effectiveness.

Who knew.

'Who are you and how did you get in here? I'm a locksmith. And, I'm a locksmith.' (Leslie Nielsen)