The Government furlough scheme, designed to support businesses and help safeguard jobs in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, has opened for applications.<\/p>\n
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The Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme has gone live today<\/strong> with businesses now able to claim for up to 80% of furloughed staff wages from the start of March until the end of June. The scheme had initially been due to run until the end of May but was extended by a month last week after a further three weeks at least of UK lock-down were confirmed.<\/p>\n The launch of the scheme comes as the Government was warned of the economic cost for many companies of any delay in its implementation.\u00a0<\/strong>Adam Marshall, director general at the British Chamber of Commerce (BCC), said the situation for so many firms was \u201cextremely difficult\u201d.<\/p>\n He was asked about the consequences of support not coming through fast enough, and told Sky News\u2019s Sophy Ridge On Sunday: \u201cWell, the cost here is in terms of people\u2019s livelihoods.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re seeing for example about 66%, two-thirds of businesses, telling us that they\u2019re going to use the furlough scheme<\/strong> in order to try to get some support for their employees so that they don\u2019t have to make them redundant or lay them off.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s a really big number, and unless some of that cash flows through from the furlough scheme quickly when applications open, a lot of businesses are going to face difficulty paying wages and paying suppliers.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cSo the human cost as well as the economic cost could be big if we don\u2019t see support moving more quickly to the frontline.\u201d<\/p>\n Marshall told the programme: \u201cWe\u2019ve found that about 60% of companies have less than three months\u2019 cash in reserve,<\/strong> many who have seen their revenues fall off a cliff over the past month or so, and many of them are taking some really big life or death decisions as businesses.<\/p>\n \u201cSo the support getting to the front line over the next few days is going to be absolutely critical.\u201d<\/p>\n In a statement, Chancellor Rishi Sunak said: \u201cOur unprecedented job retention scheme will protect millions of jobs across the country<\/strong> and is now up and running.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s vital that our economy gets up and running again as soon as it\u2019s safe<\/strong> \u2013 and this scheme will allow that to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n Under the furlough scheme, employers can go online to claim cash grants worth up to 80% of wages, capped at \u00a32,500 a month per worker.<\/p>\n Approximately 5,000 HMRC staff will operate the scheme<\/strong>, intended to assist thousands of UK firms, with the money due to reach bank accounts within six working days, a statement from the Treasury said.<\/p>\n Phone lines and web-chat services will be available<\/strong> to help answer applicants\u2019 questions, with the scheme launching 10 days ahead of schedule, it added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":137618,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16042,10585,6,10494],"tags":[19548,18740,5202,5707,16337,16011],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n