LONDON (Reuters) – A quarter of companies in Britain had temporarily closed or paused trading due to the coronavirus lockdown by early April, according to a survey published by the country’s official statistics office on Thursday.
“For responding businesses who were still trading, an average of 21% of the workforce had been furloughed (under the terms of the UK government’s Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme),” the Office for National Statistics said.
The survey of 5,316 businesses covered the period March 23 to April 5.
(Writing by William Schomberg; Editing by Susan Fenton)
