It has been estimated that, at the time that the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (a.k.a. furlough leave) is withdrawn at the end of October 2020, more than 1 million employees will still be reliant upon it, leading to fears that approximately this number of employees may be made redundant once that support is no longer available.

The Office of National Statistics has already reported that the rate of redundancies is at its worst since 2009 and the aftermath of the Credit Crunch, with 156,000 employees having been made redundant in the 3 months leading up to July 2020 and 695,000 employees having been dropped from employers’ payrolls overall since March.