Chancellor Extends Furlough Scheme Until October

In Parliament today, the Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, has announced that the furlough scheme (also known as the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS)) will continue for all business sectors and regions of the UK in some form until the end of October.

Adding that he and the Government backed UK workers and employers going into the coronavirus lockdown, and would continue to support them afterwards.

Extension of the furlough scheme

The furlough scheme will remain in its current form (e.g. 80% of pay up to £2,500 per month) until end of July and from then onwards, there will be scope for employees to be partly furloughed and return to work part time at which point, the Government will be asking employers to pay a percentage of the cost of the scheme.

Further details will be published before the end of this month.

According to official Government statistics, there are roughly 7.5 million employees being paid via the furlough scheme, which is an increase of 1.2 million from the amount announced just one week ago.

Employees still being made redundant despite the furlough scheme being in place

Despite the scheme being in place since 20^th March, many employers have been forced into making a number of their employees redundant.

In the last couple of weeks Virgin Atlantic have announced that they are making 3,000 employees redundant, British Airways 12,000 job cuts, P&O 1,100 redundancies.