Payroll United Kingdom - Frequently Asked Questions

At the point of the Leave Payment stage of the Pay Batch process, the system automatically reduces the days (waiting days).  To overcome this, change the quantity of SSP days against one of the SSP days from 1 to 4 to pay the 3 waiting days.

The government has issued guidance to employers, advising them to use their discretion not to require a GP fit note for COVID-19 related absences. The March 2020 Budget announced that the government and the NHS will bring forward a temporary alternative to the fit note in the coming weeks which can be used for the duration of the COVID-19 outbreak. This system will enable people who are advised to self-isolate to obtain a notification via NHS111 which they can use as evidence for absence from work, where necessary. 

The government will support small and medium-sized businesses and employers to cope with the extra costs of paying COVID-19 related SSP by refunding eligible SSP costs. The eligibility criteria for the scheme are as follows:

• This refund will be limited to two weeks per employee

• Employers with fewer than 250 employees will be eligible. The size of an employer will be determined by the number of people they employed as of 28 February 2020

• Employers will be able to reclaim expenditure for any employee who has claimed SSP (according to the new eligibility criteria) as a result of COVID-19

• Employers should maintain records of staff absences, but should not require employees to provide a GP fit note

• The eligible period for the scheme will commence from the day on which the regulations extending SSP to self-isolators come into force

• While existing systems are not designed to facilitate such employer refunds for SSP, the government will work with employers over the coming months to set up a repayment mechanism for employers as soon as possible. In preparation for claiming SSP back for COVID-19 sickness, the following information would need to be provided to the HMRC once the provision has been set up:

• Employers will need to ensure that they are registered online users.

  • Employers will need to know their PAYE scheme reference number.

  • A contact name and telephone number to whom the HMRC can liaise with if there are any queries.

  • UK bank or building society details to receive the payment into.

  • The total amount of coronavirus related SSP that has been paid to employees for the claim period - this should not exceed the weekly rate that is set.

  • The number of employees the claim is being made for.

  • The start and end date of the claim period. Business may claim for multiple pay periods and employees at the same time. The start date of the claim is the start date of the earliest pay period and the end date of the claim is the end date of the recent pay period.

DWP has issued a statement on their debt management telephone line, advising that all debt management collection in relation to overpayments of benefits, tax credits and social funds have been suspended for a temporary period. They will not be issuing any new collection notices nor collecting any debt during this time.

Employers who process DEAs for DWP via their payroll are advised to suspend all DEA collections and to not set up new orders that may have recently been received. You are not required to speak to an advisor or gain authorisation to action this.

Official guidance will be published. If you would like to hear the notice given, you can call 0800 916 0614, selecting option 1 for employers.

There could be several reasons for this. Consider checking the following:

• The FPS files must be sent in order that they are created as year to date values are output onto the FPS and HMRC use the latest received FPS to update the year to date values. Therefore, if you have any FPS’s that are still pending to be sent that have a pay batch number lower than the one you are sending, it will be held until all previous FPS’s for that pay group has been sent.

• There is a service that is polling to pick up new files and to send. It could be that the polling timer has not yet been reached.

• If you have checked that there are no other previous files pending to be sent and that you have been waiting longer than 20 minutes, it could be that the service has stopped. In this circumstance, you should log a support ticket for investigation.