Burges Salmon is the latest UK law firm to repay the funds it received under the government’s furlough scheme.
The Bristol-headquartered firm furloughed 42 employees in April when the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) came into effect. Service team roles including front-of-house staff, personal assistants and travel coordinators were affected.
However, the organisation performed better than expected in the months that followed and was not forced to make any permanent redundancies or salary cuts, and subsequently returned all employees from furlough. It now plans to return in full the money it received to HMRC in December.
“Having undertaken a detailed financial review and forecasting exercise of the first six months of 2020, our firm is now in a stronger-than-anticipated position with a greater degree of confidence about the future,” said Roger Bull, managing partner at Burges Salmon.
“We are very grateful to have had access to the furlough scheme but as we are in a better position than we anticipated, we are pleased to be able to repay it.”
In October, Eversheds and Norton moved to repay COVID-19 relief funds to the government, as did Dentons – which also wound down its scheme allowing staff to work four days a week for reduced pay, with all returning to full five-day working weeks. Herbert Smith Freehills and Osborne Clarke wound down their own cost-saving measures and reimbursed the government for savings made through COVID-19 mitigation schemes.
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The global legal sector has begun to bounce back as dire forecasts made during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic have largely failed to come to fruition. Major US and UK law firms are now beginning to expand their operations in preparation for 2021 and beyond.
