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This is probably complicated but I’ll start a debate anyway. It’s my understanding that furlough is available for public bodies and to be used where an income generating role has been lost or reduced. So let’s say a body wanted to apply this to say their food standards staff, or to building officers or planning where those roles normally attract a statutory fee rather than a normal income. Would furlough be applicable in that case?
Hmmn not sure sorry. Getting stuck into law and 'the written word' takes either a LOT of time and an ability to shift through a very peculiar, subtle and devious genre of English writing or going to law school and specializing in that particular area. There are easier ways to do it, but maybe not cheap (both perhaps). I think unionizing is probably the most affordable way or visiting the citizens advice bureau. If you're going to make a fuss about it in work you need to be 100% certain or the pen-pushers will hang you out to try.
Are you part of a union? I joined one recently as there is clearly a shit storm on its way.
Unions are all over this kind of thing but in my particular case it’s probably better to shut up and keep your head below the parapet. That scenario only applies to a small number of staff and would be too easy to find yourself singled out.
Always good to have some sort of opinion in my back pocket though!!
Don't know about the legalities of it but I'd guess all council revenues are down, whether it be tax take, parking charges, statutory charges, commercial activities. If being furloughed might mean the remaining money lasts longer or prevents some redundancies i cant see why it shouldnt happen, especially if the workload has genuinely dropped. If it was me I'd shut up, do what was asked and be grateful I still had a job and some income, many don't.
Councils Could always keep people in and get them mending roads?😀
AINAL
As I understand it there is no exclusion in the legislation preventing a public sector organisation from using the scheme. There is some wording in the guidance / info around the scheme which says the treasury doesn’t expect most public sector orgs or private sector orgs funded by the public sector to need to use the scheme, but there may be occasions where they could.
It’s worth noting that there is no obligation on any employer to use the scheme. (There is also no requirement for any employee to agree to go on furlough - although the consequence may be redundancy).
In the examples you cited I would have thought most local authorities could redeploy those people, into roles useful in responding to Covid.
IANAL but a statutory fee is still an income isn't it, just a controlled amount. It's not like a central government grant.
I couldn’t agree more about staff being redeployed, that would be ideal. I would be as happy as a pig in dung to be given a shovel and a barrow of tarmac to go mend roads. It didn’t happen in my case though as I still had plenty of work in my normal role, although it was reduced about 40%
Redeployment was all the talk but now that access to the magic money tree has been granted things have changed.
I work for a district council with around 750 employees. As far as I'm aware no one has been furloughed included the planners etc etc. All office based staff are however working from home and many have been re-deployed to other areas (including myself briefly).
Our income is down though, I think we currently have a £2.1 million defect between what central government have paid us and what we'd normally be bringing in.
I suspect many of our projects for the next few years will be scrapped and its likely that long term working from home will be encouraged.
My missus is Local authority and like Rockhopper said most are working from home/redeployed on CV19 response related work...
And they're racking up an overspend which little Rishi promised to deal with a couple of weeks ago. We'll see how this all goes shall we...