By the end of the first four days of HMRC’s Job Retention Scheme portal being open 435,000 claims had been made in respect of 3.2m individuals. The estimated value of these claims is £3.75bn.
This is, we are told well below the governments anticipated level.
The relatively slow uptake is a cause for concern. The reasons unclear. The process and systems have been working well and claims by employers with up to 70 employees are reportedly taking under 2 hours.
One factor which I have experienced first-hand is that payroll bureaus have been swamped by the workload caused by these claims in the same week that they will be processing the majority of their clients April payrolls. If this is the case expect to see a further surge of claims next week.
But economists, and I can say this having a degree in the subject, are unsurprisingly pessimistic about the medium-term effect the JRS will have on redundancies. Predictions that unemployment will rise above 6m this summer have been circulating this week as firms are unable to survive without further government support.
If that were to happen the cost to The Treasury would be very significant. I suspect the government will be looking at this situation very closely over the next few days.
All of this comes at a time when, like most businesses, the Treasury has seen a significant drop in income. VAT revenues fell 70% in. March to £2.4bn, the lowest level since September 1992 when the catastrophic effects of “Black Wednesday” wreaked so much damage.
