With recent storms and severe flooding affective parts of the country, there is no surprise this is on your clients mind now. I would strongly encourage your client to create a policy on this, that can be distributed to staff for future reference and use in inclement conditions.
Your client first needs to consider where they will draw the line on requiring people to come to the office. They have a duty of care towards the employees, including to ensure they are not putting themselves or others in danger by attending work. To avoid this, they need to think which employees can do their work from home, and how easy is it to do this at short notice. If they use laptops, this is likely to be relatively easy, and should the forecast be very poor then employees can be asked to work from home for those days.
If however it would not be possible for them to work from home, then they will need an alternative plan. Ultimately, it is the employee’s responsibility to get to work. If this is not possible because the bus is cancelled, or they don’t feel confident driving, for example, your client is not obliged to pay them for any hours that they miss, as it is not a decision made by the employer for them not to attend. Your client might however consider allowing for TOIL or annual leave to be used to cover this time or agree for the hours to be worked back at a later date.
Should the weather for closure of the office, your client technically is stopping employees from working. In this situation, if they have a lay-off clause in their contract, this can be used, and only eligible employees will be entitled to statutory guarantee pay. Otherwise, they will need to be paid in full for any work they miss due to the employers need to close the office (unless lay-off is agreed in the absence of a clause).
Your client is also going to need to make sure they have up to date contact details for employees. Should they need to close the office, for example, they will need to tell everyone via personal contact, not just a work email, as employees may not have access (or choose not to) to work emails and phone outside of working hours.
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