Contracts of employment must state what an employee is paid, when they are paid, what their holiday entitlement is and their notice period. However, what the employee should be paid while they are on holiday, during their notice period or if they are made redundant rarely is.

It might seem straightforward to calculate these payments, but the reality can be far from it. This is because there is a legal definition of a week’s pay which must be used to calculate what these payments are.

The Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) has complicated the calculation of these payments because many employers have been paying the reduced rate of pay for furloughed employees: the higher of 80% of basic salary or £2,500. Some employers, who made redundancies early on in the CJRS, calculated statutory notice and redundancy payments on employees’ reduced rate furlough pay, and were arguably lawfully able to do so.