With effect from 1 April 2007 all employees expecting a baby on or after this date will be able to commence SMP on any day rather than on a Sunday as previously allowed.

SMP will be paid for a continuous period of up to 39 weeks.

Keeping In Touch (KIT) days have also been introduced whereby an employee will be allowed to work up to a maximum of 10 days without losing SMP. If the employee works for more than 10 days, she will lose one weeks SMP for each week or part week that she works.

HMRC have provided the following information for Advance Funding requests:

"As an alternative to writing to your Accounts Office for funding to pay SSP, SMP, SAP, or SPP, where the amount of money you need to pay out exceeds the amount of tax and NICs you will have available for the same tax month or quarter, you can, from 26 February 2007, use the structured e-mail facility on our website to send your request."

Go to http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/employers/statpayments-recovery.htm

Click on the relevant Statutory Payment i.e. SSP, SMP, SAP or SPP.

Complete the details required within the structured e-mail and send it

You will receive an acknowledgement that your request has been received and advice that it should be processed and payment issued within 4 working days

The Government has been developing proposals to increase the current statutory minimum holiday entitlement from four weeks (20 days) to 5.6 weeks (maximum 28 days) per year. Some employers currently include the 8 bank holidays as part of the workers' 20 day leave entitlement.

The proposals outline how the Government plans to implement its manifesto commitment, to make paid time off for bank holidays additional to the current four-week holiday entitlement. Raising the holiday entitlement to 5.6 weeks, is equivalent to an increase from 20 days to 28 days for someone working a five-day week.

In light of the response to the initial consultation, the Government is now consulting on detailed proposals and draft regulations. It proposes to amend the Working Time Regulations 1998, to increase the statutory entitlement to paid holiday from four weeks to 4.8 weeks from 1 October 2007, and from 4.8 weeks to 5.6 weeks on 1 April 2009, subject to a maximum statutory entitlement of 28 days.

Further details on the proposals and links to the related documents can be found on DTI's website at: http://www.dti.gov.uk/employment/holidays/index.html

Statutory Redundancy Calculator
http://www.dti.gov.uk/employment/employment-legislation/ employment-guidance/page33157.html

Statutory Maternity Pay Calculator
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/calcs/smp.htm

Minimum Wage Rates
http://www.dti.gov.uk/employment/pay/national-minimum-wage/index.html

P46 forms to download
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/forms/p46.pdf

Childcare Calculator - helping you choose between tax credits and vouchers
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/calcs/ccin.htm

The paperless office is emerging at last. We are now able to offer our clients an alternative to paper payslips! We all know how we love to receive those calls from employees about how they can't find their last 3 months payslips and they need copies like yesterday to show the bank manager etc etc.. well, help is at hand. ePayslips.com is a revolutionary self service payslip facility providing secure internet access to current and archived payslips, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Security is of course a paramount consideration and the service has been designed mirroring controls normally associated with on-line banking.

All uploading and downloading of data uses "https" - this ensures all data is encrypted and meaningless to hackers. An employee can only see his/her own payslips using a unique login.

For a quick demonstration, just click on www.epayslips.com

We are delighted to announce the launch of KCS Contractor Services. After a number of requests from clients in the recruitment sector we have launched two umbrella company services for contractors, the first focusing on short term contractors and the second for those involved in contracting in the longer term.

Our service comes with the quality assurance of a top ten payroll company now responsible for paying over 60,000 people every month. We believe that our service models are innovative whilst, at the same time, compliant with all relevant statute including the Finance Bill 07.

So for the best umbrella services around at the most competitive price in the market recommend your contractors to KCS.

If you would like to learn more just click on the weblink www.kcsrightsource.com/contractor or call Siobhan Tremain-Coker on 0208 645 2737

Please use our central email address for ALL payroll related queries.
payroll@pro-pay.co.uk

This will ensure your query is answered in a prompt manner.