Sunak upgrades his jobs support scheme

Chancellor Rishi Sunak has upgraded the jobs support scheme with a more generous package. The new measures, which will replace furlough on 1 November, will see eligible businesses pay just 5 per cent of their employee’s non-working hours (originally 33 per cent), with the government picking up the huge bulk of the tab once again. Where employees would have needed to work 33 per cent of their hours to be eligible for the scheme, this has now dropped to 20 per cent — the equivalent of one day out of the working week.

The updated job support scheme sticks with the principle of the original plan: your employees have to be working to receive the subsidies. But it abandons plans to transfer the majority of the financial burden back onto the employer and away from the government. Under the scheme now, many employees will have their salary primarily paid by the government rather than their boss.

Along with the new support for wages, the Chancellor has also announced support for the self-employed, doubling grants from 20 to 40 per cent of profits, increasing the maximum grant to nearly £4,000.