Hannah Vickers, chief executive of the Association for Consultancy and Engineering (ACE) responded to Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s announcements on covering 80% of wages if not working and a package of additional business support. She said:  

“We are living in truly historic times, so today’s announcement should not come as a surprise. Yet the scale and scope of the Chancellor’s interventions are unprecedented. Business leaders within our membership base, our industry and across the wider economy will breathe a sigh of relief to see significant support on wages, procurement process changes to ease cashflow pressure and delays to VAT. Taken together, these measures will ensure businesses can weather the storm of COVID-19 and emerge fairly intact in the immediate term.

“With short term issues now put to bed, focus needs to turn to the medium term and our industries’ role in the economic recovery of the nation. We wrote to the Chancellor earlier in the week with a range of suggested measures to help our members develop our capability to do this, and we look forward to meeting with his team to discuss how we can ensure construction and infrastructure investment remains a catalyst for growth when normality returns.”

ENDS