The expansion of the scheme will provide a safety net for businesses across the UK who are required to temporarily close their doors, giving them the right support at the right time.

The new Job Support Scheme (JSS), announced by the Chancellor Rishi Sunak in September, will run from 1 November for six months to help keep employees attached to the workforce. The new measure will protect jobs and enable businesses to reopen quickly once restrictions are lifted.

Firms whose premises are legally required to shut for some period over winter as part of local or national restrictions will receive grants to pay the wages of staff who cannot work. This includes businesses that are required to provide only delivery and collection services from their premises.

Businesses will only be eligible to claim the grant while they are subject to restrictions and employees must be off work for a minimum of seven consecutive days. The government will support eligible businesses by paying two thirds of each employees’ salary (or 67%), up to a maximum of £2,100 a month. To be eligible employees must be employed and an RTI submission notifying payment in respect of that employee to HMRC must have been made on or before 23 September.

The scheme will be open to employers across the UK even if they have not previously used the furlough scheme.

Under the scheme, employers will not be required to contribute towards wages and only asked to cover NICS and pension contributions, a very small proportion of overall employment costs. It is estimated that around half of potential claims are likely not to incur employer NICs or auto-enrolment pension contributions and so face no employer contribution.

In line with the rest of the JSS, payments to businesses will be made in arrears, via a HMRC claims service that will be available from early December. Employees of firms that have been legally closed in the period before 1 November are eligible for the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS).

In addition to the expansion of the JSS, the government is making the Local Restrictions Support Grant scheme more generous so that businesses in England can receive up to £3,000 per month, rather than up to £1,500 per three weeks, and are eligible for payment sooner, after only two weeks of closure rather than three.

• Properties with a rateable value of £15,000 or under will receive grants of £667 per two weeks of closure (£1,334 per month).
• Properties with a rateable value of over £15,000 and less than £51,000 will receive grants of £1,000 per two weeks of closure (£2,000 per month).
• Properties with an rateable value of £51,000 or over will receive grants of £1500 per two weeks of closure (£3,000 per month).

This could benefit hundreds of thousands of businesses, including restaurants, pubs, nightclubs, bowling alleys and many more.

The government is also extending the scheme to include businesses which have been forced to close on a national rather than a local basis. The scheme is UK wide and the UK Government will work with the devolved administrations to ensure the scheme operates effectively across all four nations.

In July the UK government announced an unprecedented guarantee that the devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland would receive a minimum of £12.7 billion in additional resource funding this year. Today the government is uplifting that by £1.3 billion, to at least £14 billion. This means at least £7.2 billion for the Scottish Government, £4.4 billion for the Welsh Government and £2.4 billion for the Northern Ireland Executive, on top of their Spring Budget 20 funding, allowing them to continue their response to Covid-19 including through similar measures if they wish.

These measures will sit alongside the original JSS – which is designed to support businesses that are facing low demand over the winter months – and the £1,000 Job Retention Bonus (JRB) which encourages employers to keep staff on payroll.

Further details on the expanded JSS can be found on this factsheet: Job Support Scheme Expansion for Closed Business Premises

The government will also continue to help local authorities. Those at the highest levels of incidence will continue to receive targeted funding based on population size to support test, trace and contain activities at this stage of the national Covid-19 response. This is on top of £3.7 billion in grants to address Covid-related pressures, and £300 million for local authorities to develop outbreak plans, already allocated across England.

The government has previously committed £400 million to support local authorities’ Test, Trace and Contain Activities in England:

• • £300 million has already been allocated for local authorities to develop local outbreak plans
  • the remaining £100 million is being allocated to local authorities as ‘surge funding’ in areas of local restriction
  • £20 million of this £100 million has already been allocated based on population size, including to local authorities in Leicester, Lancashire, the North East, Merseyside, and the West Midlands

Broader government support to local authorities in England due to Covid-19 includes:

• • over £3.7 billion of un-ringfenced grant funding to help them respond to pressure across all their services
  • over £1.1 billion ringfenced to support social care providers, helping to tackle the spread of the virus
  • a down payment of £50 million to set up and run the Test and Trace Support Payment – £500 for low-income workers who can’t work from home and are told to self-isolate – and we will fully fund the costs of this scheme, including £15 million in discretionary funds
  • we’re providing a further £30 million to LAs improve compliance with and enforcement of non-pharmaceutical interventions (such as self-isolation and business closures) over the next four months, including through COVID Marshalls

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