BBC News
By Katy Austin
media captionRishi Sunak: We’re throwing absolutely everything at it
Fewer than 2,000 young people have so far started new roles under the government s £2bn Kickstart jobs scheme, data shows.
The programme, which launched in September, has created 120,000 temporary jobs to date.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak told the BBC coronavirus restrictions were making it harder for more young people to get started.
However, he expected the number to rise once restrictions are lifted. Obviously because of the lockdowns and restrictions, that hampers businesses ability to bring people into work, said Mr Sunak, What we can look forward to, as the restrictions ease, is more of these young people starting those placements.
One lobby group estimates 250,000 small firms are at risk of going bust. Bloomberg | Jan 25, 2021
(Bloomberg) The U.K.’s third major lockdown to control the coronavirus could be the final straw for thousands of businesses struggling to pay rent and taxes with little or no money coming in the door.
“It is costing us thousands of pounds a week, even being shut, and we have zero income,” said Andrew Wong, owner of the upmarket Chinese restaurant A. Wong in London’s fashionable Pimlico neighborhood. “I think all the time about shutting down and walking away, though I’m not going to do it.”
A multi-million pound scheme set up to support apprentices during the Covid pandemic has been slammed for making tiny progress after it emerged less than 200 applications have been submitted - with just 32 payments processed.
Back in September, Economy Minister Diane Dodds announced she had secured an additional £17.2m from the Executive to bolster Northern Ireland s efforts tackling the effects of the pandemic, which was supplemented with additional funds from the department.
The Department for the Economy s Apprenticeship Recovery Package is made up of three initiatives, which benefitted from an extensive advertising campaign across TV, print, radio and social media.
A total of £12.5m was allocated to the Apprenticeship Recruitment Incentive, which was designed to encourage and support employers to create apprenticeships for both new apprentices and those who had been made redundant. It offers support of £3,000 to employers for each new role created between April 1, 2020 an
FSB webinar to help push local online sales By Calum MacLeod Published: 15:53, 24 January 2021
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David Richardson
Independent businesses are to be helped to get a share of the growing online retail market in a webinar organised by the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB).
The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated the trend towards online shopping, with figures from the British Retail Consortium showing that non-food online sales jumped by 44.8 per cent in December.
The FSB webinar, which will take place between 10am and 11.30am on Thursday, January 28, is aimed at helping businesses begin or add to an online shopping presence.
Months of lockdown, restricted trading and money spent on anti-Covid-19 measures mean that thousands of small business owners are at breaking point. But for many, next Sunday s tax payment deadline could be the final straw.
While revenues have collapsed as a result of ten months of zero or little money coming in, costs such as rent, mortgages, utility bills and leases have all still had to be paid.
This has meant that money normally put aside to meet tax bills has in many cases been depleted, along with any cash buffers and even personal savings.
Simply trying to stay afloat has cost many business owners very dear. Yet, now, they face income tax bills from the previous financial year (to April 5, 2020), when coronavirus was only starting to make an impact on the economy.