The Government’s Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS), which subsidises the wages of UK workers, will be extended until the end of October.
Announced in March, the ‘furlough scheme’ had been due to close at the end of June.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak said there would be no changes in the system, whereby the Government pays 80% of furloughed workers’ wages up to £2,500 per month, until the end of July. From August, the scheme will continue for all sectors and regions but with greater flexibility for firms to bring staff back to work. Under the current scheme furloughed employees cannot work.
The Chancellor also said that from August employers would need to “share with the government the cost of paying salaries”, hinting that the level of state support would taper away.
Almost a quarter of all workers in Britain were furloughed by their employers within the first two weeks of the job retention scheme’s official launch in mid-April.
The Chancellor did not provide any update about the support being provided for self-employed workers but he said people who work for themselves could claim from this week for money. The support package for the self-employed was launched to run from March for three months and was planned to be extended “if necessary”.
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