8 February 2022

This week’s update covers:

  • Jobs tax hike prep
  • HMRC Covid grant reporting video and sick pay webinar
  • Find training opportunities
  • Change afoot?
  • Close Contact Services Fund in Scotland
  • COVID-19 guidance

Jobs tax hike prep

HMRC has published guidance for employers, employees, and self-employed people on how to prepare for the imminent imposition of a year-long hike to National Insurance contributions, as of 6 April 2022, before a new, separate tax - the Health and Social Care Levy - is due to be introduced in April 2023.

HMRC Covid grant reporting video and sick pay webinar

HMRC has published a video on how to report Covid taxable grants and payments and is inviting people to sign up for one of its forthcoming webinars on the COVID-19 Statutory Sick Pay Rebate Scheme.

Find training opportunities

For National Apprenticeship Week (7-13 Feb), the Government has launched a site to help businesses find training and development opportunities for staff. Meanwhile, the Top 100 Apprenticeship Employers rankings will for the first time sit alongside a Top 50 SME Apprenticeship Employers, recognising employers' "commitment to employing apprentices, their creation of new apprenticeships, the diversity of their new apprentices, and the number of apprentices who complete their apprenticeships and progress further with the employer" - enter here if you think your business deserves recognition

Change afoot?

It’s anticipated that the Employment Bill, on hold since December 2019, will be published in 2022. Measures could include:
Carer’s leave

  • The government has confirmed plans to make carer’s leave a ‘day one’ right.
  • The leave will consist of up to five unpaid working days per year for employees with long-term caring responsibilities, to be taken in full or half days.
  • It can be taken to provide or arrange care for a person with a long-term care need, such as illness, injury or issues relating to old age.
  • Employees will have to give notice of at least twice the length of time being requested as leave, plus one day.

Read for further details.

 

Close Contact Services Fund in Scotland

The Close Contact Services Fund will provide a one-off payment to support eligible close contact service businesses impacted by the COVID restrictions and guidance introduced from 9 December 2021 to 24 January 2022 to control the Omicron variant.

The grant is a one-off payment of:

  • £1,000 for self-employed businesses
  • £1,500 for non-domestic rates (NDR) registered businesses with premises

Click for more details. 

 

COVID-19 guidance – recently updated with the latest Omicron guidance

Read our four nations’ FAQs which include links to the latest Government guidance that must be followed.

Members can call our membership team, Monday-Friday, 9-5, on 01234 831965. Please be patient due to the extremely high level of calls we are currently getting.

For legal advice, Members can login to get our 24/7 legal helpline number. Again, please be patient. The legal team is also dealing with a considerable number of calls.