The announcement from the Chancellor yesterday was welcome news for many business owners facing financial hardship over the coming weeks and months but as ever, the devil will be in the details.
Three key questions
- How far will these measures go and will there be enough support to go around?
- Which businesses will they will lend to?
- What will the lending terms will be?
Bailing out sinking ships
What we are currently seeing in the insolvency industry are businesses that were already insolvent on their balance sheets electing to go insolvent, knowing that Covid-19 will be the final nail.
However, how many of these businesses are now likely to hang on for a financial bail out and will the Government and ultimately the taxpayer be willing to bail THESE firms out?
It’s one thing to focus on the economy but there is a HUGE human impact to all of this, which is
currently being overlooked.
People first
The death toll could be really high, meaning that many of us will be affected emotionally and mentally in the near future and potentially when we all return to the workplace.
Morale will be fragile and it may be incredibly difficult to get your employees back to work and motivated to ensure productivity and output reaches levels prior to the lockdown.
Finally and most critically, we all need to spare a thought for those people in society that won’t have a job either during the government lockdown or when we are allowed to return to the workplace.
Priorities in tough times
The priority will be to get as many redundant employees as possible paid their redundancy entitlement rapidly, either via their ongoing employer or out of the NI Fund via the Redundancy Payments Service (Government Body).
I would like to hear what plans the Chancellor has in place to ensure people in this situation are granted payments within days of redundancy happening, so at least their short term future has some hope.
In recent times the Redundancy Payments Service (RPS) has been massively under-resourced, resulting in delayed payments, and if the RPS are not better prepared, then this will only add to the mental wellbeing pressures for these members of our society.
So, Mr Chancellor please think carefully where you spend taxpayers’ money. I would like to see support for wellbeing charities and redundant employees over saving businesses that were already insolvent prior to this crisis.
