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Can I switch an existing loan facility onto the CBILS scheme?

If a business has been provided with a loan from 23 March on commercial terms, providing the borrower meets the CBILS eligibility criteria, lenders have been asked to bring these facilities onto CBILS wherever possible (e.g. where the lender is accredited to offer the same facility through CBILS) and changes retrospectively applied as necessary. Please contact us if this applies to you and we can review facilities and advise upon the potential changes that may be made retrospectively to the benefit of the business.

Related FAQs

What happens if an employee refuses to attend work because they are afraid of being exposed to COVID-19 particularly the new more transmissible strain?

An employee can refuse to attend work but their refusal to do so will have to be based on a reasonable belief that their health and safety is in danger.  Whether or not their refusal is reasonable will take into consideration factors such as the employee’s own health and whether they are at a higher risk of becoming seriously ill if they contract Covid-19 and the steps their employer has out in place to mitigate the danger of contracting Covid-19 at work.

In such circumstances where the employee’s belief is deemed to be reasonable, they will be entitled to stay at home and receive full pay.

If an employee is subsequently dismissed for refusing to attend work in these circumstances, they may be able to bring a claim for unfair dismissal.

Freedom to Speak up – a reminder

Has there ever been a more important time for all staff to feel that they are able to raise concerns about their working environment?

It is a pertinent time to remind all staff that they should be able to raise concerns without the fear of repercussions. It is a good time to be reviewing and re-issuing your Freedom to Speak up/Whistleblowing policy to all. Likewise it is a good time to remind all staff that they should not treat others unfairly or detrimentally for raising health and safety concerns.

Both subjecting someone to a detriment because they have blown the whistle or raised health and safety concerns (and dismissing someone for the same) is unlawful.

What should I do if I think this is relevant to my contracts?

It would be prudent to take legal advice early in relation to any issue you foresee in performing a contract. This will allow you to:

  • Ensure that initial contact with your counterparty is framed in the correct way
  • Ensure that any variations are fully documented so that both parties are fully protected
How do I reduce employment costs? Are we talking about redundancy?

The obvious option to reduce the cost of your workforce is redundancy. However, that also reduces the number of employees and therefore your capacity.

What are some other factors?

No one factor will determine status and the outcomes will differ depending on the nature of the work being carried out and the business of the end user client.

When you have carried out an assessment based on the relevant factors you can either get in touch with us to discuss further, check your answers against HMRC’s CEST tool or do both before making a final determination.