Around 25% of workers who have been put on the furlough scheme could face losing their jobs when the government cuts payouts.

A survey of 2,000 businesses carried out on behalf of London-based lender MarketFinance Ltd found almost a quarter of them plan to cut jobs.

The Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, introduced in March, has seen the government pay workers 80% of their wages, up to £2,500 a month.

But Chancellor Rishi Sunak recently announced a shake-up to the scheme which will from August see employers pay a portion of their workers’ wages with the amount increasing until the scheme is stopped at the end of October.

But from August employers will have to pay national insurance and pension contributions, and then from September they will have to pay those contributions plus 10% of salaries.

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From October companies will have to pay those contributions plus 20% of salaries, and the scheme will end on October 31.

But around 45% of companies will bring back as many as half their furloughed staff in July, according to the survey.

Another finding was that nine in 10 companies are still waiting to be paid for work carried out before the pandemic hit in March, and this lost cash flow is making it harder to pay employees.

And the majority of small businesses say it could take one to two years to get back to normal, with fears rising about lasting economic damage from the pandemic.

It comes after Brits were warned of a ‘spike in redundancies’ in the coming weeks as companies start having to pay up.

The Office for National Statistics estimates furlough is costing the government around £8 billion a month.

Boris Johnson announced this week that a number of lockdown measures will be eased at the beginning of July in a bid to help the UK economy.

This will allow pubs and restaurants in England, as well as hotels, hairdressers, museums and cinemas to begin reopening on July 4, which some MPs are calling ‘Super Saturday’.

He stressed this will help revive the economy and move the country towards a ‘new normal’.

He told MPs that given the ‘significant fall in the prevalence of the virus’, the two-metre social distancing rule can be cut to ‘one-metre plus’.

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