Hope is that furloughed workers have jobs to return to today

WHILE the Government could be criticised on a number of fronts for its handling of the Covid pandemic, few would argue that the furlough scheme has been anything other than a success.

With lockdown restrictions forcing a multitude of businesses to temporarily shut down or curb their trading activities, threatening the viability of firms as the country battled the spread of coronavirus, mass job losses loomed large across a spectrum of industries.

However, the introduction of the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme in March 2020 provided a vital lifeline as the government paid towards the wages of people who could not work, or whose employers could no longer afford to pay them, up to a monthly limit of £2,500.

Covid-19 may have forced large parts of the UK economy to close, but furlough enabled businesses to retain staff who might otherwise have been axed as firms struggled to stay afloat.

At first it paid 80% of a furloughed worker’s usual wage, but in August and September this dropped to 60%, with employers making up the rest.

Of course the scheme was costly – hugely so at upwards of £66 billion.

But by potentially keeping millions from unemployment and ensuring businesses survived, it has proven its worth, and been generally supported across the board.

It couldn’t last forever, and yesterday marked the final day of the scheme – leaving many still on furlough facing uncertainty.

While the economy has bounced back to some extent from the lows of 2020, hard times continue for numerous businesses and redundancies seem likely.

One might like to imagine that any who lose their jobs have plenty to now choose from, given a huge rise in job vacancies, with key sectors facing serious staffing shortfalls and crying out for workers.

However, skills or experience are unlikely to neatly overlap, and this mismatch will leave gaps still to be filled and people out of work.

“Any hope that the end of the furlough scheme might be the magic wand to solve the supply chain crisis is likely to be wishful thinking,” advised Susannah Streeter, from financial company Hargreaves Lansdown.

“There will be some job losses,” admitted Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Simon Clarke, adding: “Furlough has protected 11.6 million jobs in total ... at some point you have to end these emergency measures.”

Here in the Westcountry the jobs of thousands of workers are today in limbo.

Just over 30,000 workers were still on furlough in the South West at the end of July, ahead of the employment support scheme ending yesterday, with an estimated one million workers still on furlough nationwide.

The hope is that businesses, which have had sufficient time to prepare for the end of furlough, are now in a healthy enough position, or envisage sufficient future growth, to keep on those sustained by the scheme. We need our skilled employees who have waited patiently for brighter days to finally get back to work.