Ending Furlough means homelessness will rise in Norfolk, says charity
St Martin's says the end of furlough means many will now have to make "difficult decisions"
The Furlough scheme which protected millions of jobs during the pandemic, after being introduced in March 2020, is coming to an end today.
It's believed that 30% of the UK workforce have been on the scheme at some stage since its inception and that it's helped to save millions of jobs.
Latest data from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) shows that over a million people are still on the scheme, today.
The scheme will be completely withdrawn on October 1st.
Jan Sheldon, from the Norwich-based homeless charity St Martins told us that this decision means many will now have to make difficult decisions: "They'll have to decided whether they can afford to eat, pay their bills or indeed their rent or mortgages.
"Most of us don't save in the way that our grandparents used to save, so people don't have the reserves to pull on.
"Therefore if they don't have a strong family network to call on, I really do worry for them."
Ms Sheldon also told us that the end of the scheme means its incredibly likely that more people will be sleeping rough in Norfolk: "We seen increased numbers of people going through our 'Somewhere Safe To Stay Hubs' most recently.
"Ultimately, there's no doubt that we'll see more people coming onto the streets now. We have some resources, but not enough to support people".
With this in mind, she also told us that applications for her charity's programmes are currently climbing and expected to rise further, thanks to this decision.
"For the first three or four quarter we were seeing a steady twenty people through our 'Somewhere Safe To Stay Hubs' service. That may have been because move on was slow but now in the last quarter we have fifty-five going through that service. That's almost triple what we were this time last year".
She concluded by telling us that her charity will now have to think outside of the box in order to house more people moving forwards: "Something like our street break initiative, which we'll be bring in during the cold months means that we can support people in hotels and we can therefore house more people than before.
"So, it's all about thinking creatively and looking at additional resources- not just, how many beds have we got".