APSCo responds to Prime Minister’s plea to ‘stand by your staff and we will stand by you”

Responding to the Prime Minister’s plea to “stand by your staff and we will stand by you”, Tania Bowers, Legal Counsel and Head of Public Affairs at The Association of Professional Staffing Companies said:

“This is a time of real crisis for the recruitment sector and platitudes such as this are not helpful when we have no detail on support packages for recruitment firms already facing financial disaster. We are making urgent appeals to policy advisers asking them to recognise the vital importance of the professional recruitment sector to the UK economy – the recruitment sector is just as much a vital sector as aviation or hospitality or catering and should be also seen as a special case.”

“When we do finally come out of the other side of this crisis, the economy is going to need recruiters to get people back into work very quickly.  UK plc will not get back up and running if large numbers of recruitment companies have gone out of business and the Government will not have any chance at all of realising its ambitious programme of infrastructure projects if there are no resources to deliver them. “

“We are in conversations with the The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and will be providing them with real time data on how this crisis is impacting our members and would urge the Government to not only give immediate access to funding but also to consider other measures such as VAT relief and immediate help with the payment of salaries. Recruitment is a service industry and so salaries are by far the highest cost but with no revenue coming in the ramifications are obvious.”