Mother Returns Government Job Retention Scheme (Furlough) Payments 

Mother London has voluntarily returned all payments received through the UK Government’s Job Retention Scheme, or furlough, to HMRC. 

Through the pandemic, Mother has been making decisions to protect its business and talent base - making no redundancies. In April, when the Job Retention Scheme was launched and the broader economic impacts of coronavirus unknown, Mother implemented two main programmes to protect cash flow. 

It asked those earning over £30k to defer part of their salary, which was due to be repaid in December 2021. Alongside this, the agency identified 32 individual roles to be covered by the Job Retention Scheme, as they were difficult to fulfil with previous social distancing restrictions in place.  

With careful planning and adaptation, Mother was able to grow its client base in 2020 and recoup income lost in the initial pandemic financial shock (as seen across the big six Q2 results). Everyone covered by the Job Retention Scheme was welcomed back to work before the scheme ended and Mother’s financial bounce-back resulted in two outcomes: 

• Returning to profit

• Returning all salary deferrals a year ahead of plan


It is against this backdrop the Mother leadership team believed returning Job Retention money back to the Government was the right thing to do. 

Michael Wall, global CEO of Mother commented: “We were grateful to the UK Government for releasing these funds at the start of the pandemic. As our year went on, and thanks to the hard work and commitment of our team, we found ourselves in the fortunate position of not needing the financial support. So we’re returning the money.”