Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme

[8] A day ahead of the 2021 United Kingdom budget held on 3 March 2021, it was confirmed that the scheme had been extended once more until 30 September 2021.

[15] The decision to extend the job retention scheme was made to avoid or defer mass redundancies, company bankruptcies and potential unemployment levels not seen since the 1930s.

Following changes to the scheme announced at the end of May 2020, the director of the Northern Ireland Retail Consortium said that being asked to pay wages when businesses had not been trading was an added pressure.

Games Workshop, Bunzl, The Spectator magazine, Redrow, Barratt Developments and Taylor Wimpey were among the companies who returned all the furlough money they had claimed.

They called for publication of the names of companies receiving Bounce Back Loans to enable data matching to prevent, deter and detect fraud.

[28] In December 2020, it was reported that banks and the National Crime Agency also had concerns about fraudulent abuse of the Bounce Back Loan Scheme.

[29] In January 2021, the NCA reported that three city workers who worked for the same London financial institution had been arrested as part of an investigation into fraudulent Bounce Back Loans totalling £6 million.