| HR & EMPLOYMENT LAW
Jackie le Poidevin, Editor-in-Chief, HR Adviser |
Remote Right-to-work Checks Continue to April 2022
Arrangements for carrying out right-to-work checks remotely, which were due to end on 1 September, have now been extended to 5 April 2022. Obligatory in-person checks were suspended because of Covid and their resumption has been repeatedly deferred in response to calls from employers, who often find them more cumbersome. So if you’re hiring at the moment, what process should you follow to ensure a candidate has the right to work in the UK?
Which digital process you should follow depends on whether or not the job applicant has either a current biometric residence permit (BRP) or settled or pre-settled status under the EU Settlement Scheme (EUSS status).
No BRP or EUSS Status
In this case, if you wish to carry out remote checks rather than doing them face to face, these are the steps you should follow:
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- Ask the job applicant to send you scanned documents or an electronic photo of their documents showing their right to work.
- Once you’ve received the electronic documents, arrange a video call with the person and ask them to hold up the original documents to the camera.
- Check the documents match the uploaded version you’ve received and the photo is of the person you’re talking to.
- Mark the copy with your name and signature and the words, ‘adjusted check undertaken on [insert date] due to Covid-19’ and retain this in a safe place.
BRP or EUSS Status
If the person does have a current BRP or settled or pre-settled status under the EU Settlement Scheme, you should use the government’s online right-to-work checking service. You should:
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- Ask them for a code to access their online immigration record.
- Hold a videocall, during which you access their record, check their identity and note down any employment restrictions.
You can also use the online service if the job applicant can’t provide any of the acceptable documents.
Tip:
It would be a sensible precaution to take and save a screen shot of the applicant holding up their documents (which should be clearly visible) or of them on the video call with their online details open in a separate window.
The Future
When the government introduced remote checks, it originally said that if you hired the person, you would have to carry out a retrospective standard check within 8 weeks of the temporary measures ending. However, the Home Office has confirmed that you will not have to carry out any further checks. You can therefore rely on digital checks without having to worry about additional red tape further down the line.
Based on the government’s current guidance, from 6 April next year you will have to check either the applicant’s original documents or, where applicable, their right to work online. It would still be permissible to carry out a document check without the person being physically present – however, you would have to persuade them to send their original documents by post, which you would then check during a videocall. This is unlikely to be a practical option in most cases.
Fortunately, the government is exploring the feasibility of a new digital system that would make online checks a permanent solution. The intention is that you would also be able to check British citizens’ right to work online, bringing the system into line with that for holders of a BRP or EUSS status. This would speed up and simplify the recruitment process.
However, we don’t know if this system will be ready by April and, if it isn’t, whether in-person checks will be postponed again. You should therefore check the government’s guidance closer to the time.
| HEALTH & SAFETY
Paul Smith, Co-Editor-in-Chief, Risk Assessment & Compliance; Editorial Board Member, Health & Safety Adviser |
Are Your Safeguards as Good as You Think? There’s Only One Way to Find Out
There’s no doubt Covid precautions are being relaxed, both in society at large and at work. But in the workplace, is this happening as a result of deliberate decisions by managers, or are we simply turning a blind eye to ‘rule fatigue’? We argue the first is fine, but the second is dangerous – and this doesn’t just apply to Covid risks. Read on to find out the key actions we recommend.
My travels this week have taken me to a variety of workplaces including two universities in different cities, as well as offices, shops, banks and filling stations. I’m always interested in these places’ health and safety standards, but what really stands out is how Covid precautions have been relaxed. Of course, this is endorsed by the government, which is asking us to rely more on personal judgment than official diktat. But, as I used a packed lift with at least 3 people not wearing masks, I had to question: is rule relaxation happening because our risk assessment judges the risk to be so much lower, or is it just by default?
This Made Me Uneasy
In one particular site I visit, key items of equipment are typically used by one person one day and another the next. The Covid risk assessment says they should be sanitised at the start and end of each shift, but I discovered this has been quietly dropped. When I challenged why this was, no one could point to a new instruction, or a procedure that had changed. Somehow, people just stopped doing it, no one then said anything, so they assumed they needn’t bother any more. In this particular case, I would have been OK with managers using their discretion to say ‘you don’t need to do this now’, but for it just to lapse made me uneasy.
Managers are Responsible for What Happens – and Doesn’t Happen
In law, managers and directors are deemed to control the workplace. That makes us responsible for what goes on there, whether we actively direct that it should be so, or just let it happen. Recent case reports from Health and Safety Executive (HSE) inspectors feature firms who were found liable because:
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- They allowed known unsafe working practices to continue, sometimes for years.
- No one tackled obvious hazards such as moving vehicles, or entanglement with machinery.
- Safety devices did not work because they had been deliberately overridden.
- Directors and managers ignored unsafe behaviour and ‘near misses’, right up until someone actually got hurt.
- Safeguards listed in risk assessments existed on paper only: they were never implemented in practice.
So, What’s the Answer?
To meet Reg. 5 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, employers must monitor their own safety arrangements. Not only is this a fundamental plank of any effective management system, it’s also the best way of avoiding nasty surprises.
Monitoring includes looking at what has gone wrong but even more important are inspections, audits and checks that take place before the accident happens (‘active’ or ‘proactive’ monitoring). Whole books have been written about this, but the key thing is to set up arrangements that work in the context of your particular set-up. Good starting points are:
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- Go and look: common hazards such as dodgy wiring, trailing cables and blocked fire exits are often immediately obvious.
- Talk to people: no one knows more about operations than those who carry them out every day.
- For every policy and procedure, ask ‘is this being implement in practice?’ If you’ve got a gap between theory and practice, you need to deal with it.
- Never treat risk assessment as a purely paper-based, form-filling exercise. Beware of assessments that list precautions no one has ever got round to implementing: they can actually be used against you if someone’s harmed.
- If you don’t already have an inspection/audit regime, look at setting one up now. It will help you avoid the pitfall of finding (possibly after a serious injury or a work-related Covid case) that your health and safety procedures were nowhere near as good as everyone thought.
| PAYROLL
Sarah Bradford, Editor-in-Chief, Pay & Benefits Adviser |
What Happens to the Homeworking Allowance as Employees Return to the Workplace?
From September, many employees are returning to the office, either on a full-time or flexible basis. But where employees have previously worked from home as a result of the pandemic, they may be able to claim tax relief for the additional costs incurred as a result. However, this is not an option where you have paid them a homeworking allowance. Where the return to the office is on a flexible basis and employees continue to work from home some of the time, you can continue to pay them a tax-free homeworking allowance.
Tax Relief Claims
HMRC have set up a dedicated portal through which employees can claim tax relief for the additional costs they incurred as a result of working from home. The portal is available on the Gov.uk website.
Employees can choose how to work out the amount on which tax relief can be claimed. The simplest method is to use HMRC’s standard amount of £6 per week (£26 per month). This equates to an annual claim of £312 and will save a basic taxpayer £62.40 and a higher rate taxpayer £124.80 in tax.
The claim can be made for the whole of the 2021/22 tax year, as long as the employee has spent some time working at home as a result of the pandemic. It is not necessary to time-apportion the claim if the employee returns to the office full-time before the end of the 2021/22 tax year.
Alternatively, the employee can make a claim based on the actual additional costs they have incurred as a result of working from home. This will cover things such as additional electricity and gas, metered water, business telephone calls and internet provisions. However, relief can only be claimed for the additional cost incurred as a result of working from home, not for the whole bill. The additional cost element may be difficult to identify and will involve extra work. Consequently, unless a claim based on actual additional costs is significantly more than one based on HMRC’s standard amount, it is unlikely to be worthwhile.
It is advisable to ensure that employees are aware that a claim can be made, and how this can be done.
Homeworking Allowance
As an employer, you can pay employees who are required to work from home a tax-free allowance of up to £6 per week (£26 per month). Where the allowance is paid, you do not need to report it to HMRC, or include it in gross pay for tax and National Insurance purposes.
As with the tax relief available to employees, you can pay a tax-free allowance based on actual additional costs where this is more than the standard amount; however, the employee would need to provide evidence of the actual additional costs that they have incurred as a result of being required to work from home.
If, like many employers, your employees are only returning to the office for a limited number of days a week and are working from home for the remainder of the time, you can continue to pay the homeworking allowance. The full £6 per week (£26 per month) can be paid as long as the employee is required to spend at least some of their time working from home.
It is not necessary to reduce the allowance pro-rata if the employee only works from home for part of the week, or where the employee only works part time. However, for the allowance to be tax-free, the employee must be required to work from home, rather than choose to do so for personal convenience.