Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the financial effect on colleges of further education of such colleges not being able to furlough staff under the terms of the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme.

College corporations were able to utilise the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) to support their staff where the corporation’s income streams, either public or non-public, ceased or reduced. The CJRS should only have been used where certain conditions were met, including that the employee on furlough worked in an area of business where services were temporarily not required, the salary was not covered by public funding and that the employee was not involved in delivering provision that had already been funded. Consequently, college corporations not able to furlough staff under the terms of CJRS would have received relevant government funding and therefore there should not have been any adverse financial impact. The Education and Skills Funding Agency continues to support college corporations where they are impacted by the effects of the COVID-19 outbreak.