NumberMill hopes that you, your staff and their families are well, and that your organisation has coped as well as possible with the disruption in the UK as a result of the pandemic.

We would like to update you with the current status of “furlough” at NumberMill, this follows significant positive feedback following our CEO, Louise Rayner’s webinar, presented on Tuesday to hundreds of agency clients.

 

Current Position

It is NumberMill’s every intention to furlough our PAYE contractors, in line with Government guidance to support the UK workforce and feel that we owe this to our loyal contractors.

However, there are a number of significant points of clarity that Government have failed as yet to make clear. These fundamentally revolve around holiday pay and the calculation of umbrella pay (given that umbrella rates are split in to National Minimum Wage and additional pay).

We are currently in ongoing discussions with the FCSA and our legal team, lobbing certain points with HMRC.

 

See press release here:

UK’s leading professional bodies join forces to seek absolute clarity on the calculation of furlough pay and holiday accrual for agency and umbrella workers

NumberMill are very hopeful that we are going to be in a position to make the first tranche of furlough payments (amounts yet to be defined) to those who qualify, on Friday 24th April and this will be for a minimum period of 3 weeks, in line with Government guidance.

No payments will be made this week and for clarity, no worker from NumberMill has received a payment for furlough yet.

Please be advised that temps who call or email will not speed up their process.

The guidance for now, is to please bear with us as we are working as quickly as possible to get this addressed.

We will be including in our Furlough variation adjustment to our contract, a clause that makes it clear that the temporary workers must accept any work offered to them. Rest assured, that if you have issues with temps not wanting to undertake paid work, you should let us know and we will stop furlough payments.

The plan would be to pay all sums in arrears of them not working for a period of 3 weeks in batches of 3 weeks. This means we would not conflict with any hours where they have worked for you.

 

Further information can be found directly on the governments website:

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/claim-for-wage-costs-through-the-coronavirus-job-retention-scheme