Coronavirus: British Gas to furlough 3,800 staff
British Gas has become the latest of the UK’s energy suppliers to take advantage of the government’s job retention scheme, furloughing around 3,800 employees as the firm scales back operations due to coronavirus.
The UK’s largest household energy supplier, which is owned by services giant Centrica, said furloughed employees will be paid 100 per cent of their regular salary.
Under the scheme, the government will pay for 80 per cent of salaries, with Centrica topping up the remaining 20 per cent.
A spokeswoman said: “We’ve had to scale back some of our operations to focus on emergency work only and looking after our vulnerable customers.
“In the short term we are placing some colleagues, who we can’t redeploy to emergency or vulnerable operations, into furlough to protect jobs and our business. They will receive 100 per cent of their regular salary.”
Centrica joins other energy suppliers such as E.ON UK, Npower and OVO Energy in furloughing staff.
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Last week the firm cancelled its dividend and warned that it would take a hit of at least £100m from the coronavirus outbreak.
The combination of the ongoing oil price war between Russia and Saudi Arabia and lockdown measures were to blame for the measures, the firm said.
British Gas engineers will only attend the most serious of callouts during the lockdown, while the firm has also been forced to postpone the sale of oil subsidiary Spirit Energy.
Nigel Frith, senior market analyst at Asktraders.com, said that the decision to top up employees’ salaries was “a generous move by the owner of British Gas and one intended for a short term period”.
He added: “However, the reality is no-one knows how long the lock down will continue for. With the death rate still rising sharply and the Prime Minister in Intensive Care, the odds of the lock down ending next week are pretty much zero.
“The fear is if these measures continue into May or even towards June the hit will be too much to swallow”.