Planned redundancies reach half million
Employers planned 58,000 redundancies in August, bringing the total to almost half a million for the first five months of lockdown, new figures have revealed.
The data, released in response to a freedom of information request by the BBC, is based on the HR1 forms which employers in England, Scotland and Wales must submit to the government if they intend to make 20 or more staff redundant. These notifications reached a peak in June and July (see previous issues).
August’s 58,000 figure, which brings the total from March to August to 480,000, is down from that of the 150,000 redundancies notified in both June and July.
HR1-based figures can provide a picture of any increase in redundancy rates several months ahead of those released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), but don’t pick up planned redundancies of fewer than 20 workers, or those in Northern Ireland, where the process is slightly different. The ONS’s figures showed 156,000 actual redundancies in the period from May to July, up from 107,000 in the preceding three months.