More than half a million claims made to the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme in its first week of being open for applications

Total value of claims is around £4.5 billion, Minister confirms in response to parliamentary written question

More than half a million claims have been made to the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) in its first week of being open for applications.

Under the CJRS - which was announced by the Chancellor Rishi Sunak on 20 March 2020 and opened for applications on 20 April 2020 - employers are able to apply to HMRC for a grant to cover 80 per cent of the salary (up to a total of £2,500 a month) of workers who are not working, but who are furloughed and kept on the payroll rather than being laid off.

Questioned about the number of claims made since the scheme opened, Financial Secretary to the Treasury Jesse Norman confirmed in a written answer yesterday that - 

'Applications for the CJRS opened on Monday 20 April. As of Sunday 26, April HMRC had received about 512,000 claims with a total value of about £4.5 billion.'

Mr Norman also advised that HMRC is working through the analysis it will be able to provide from the data available, and that the timescales for its publication and the types of data will be available 'in due course'.

Mr Norman's written answer is available from parliament.uk