We’ve been hung out to dry: homeworkers abandoned by the Chancellor

Self-employed travel consultants Nicki Cambray and Katie May are just two of the many thousands working in the travel industry disappointed to hear yesterday that they won’t receive a penny in financial support from the government during the coronavirus crisis.

Homeworker Nicki said she was ‘distraught’ when she heard Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s announcement yesterday that the financial support package being offered to ‘95% of self-employed people’ won’t apply to her.

Sunak said only workers who have submitted a tax return for the 2018/19 will receive the grants set aside for the self-employed; those who have set up their businesses within the past 12 months will get nothing.

"I am well pissed off," said Nicki, "I was really hopeful of getting some support. I’d planned my day around sitting down to watch the Chancellor’s speech [which he gave at 5pm on Thursday] and I was distraught when I heard.

"I feel like we’ve been hung out to dry. The government did nothing to help Thomas Cook and now, six months later, just as we’re getting back on our feet, we get this."

Nicki worked for four years for Oxford-based independent retailer Full Circle Travel, but the agency was badly hit by the Thomas Cook collapse and had to let her go last December, when she decided to set up as a homeworker on behalf of Full Circle.

"I was just building the business up and then this happened. Now I have literally no income."

She has been forced to apply for Jobseekers Allowance, which will give her just £74 a week. "I’ve been told I’ll hear in two weeks, I don’t know what else to do. I’ve never been a scrounger, I want to work, I need to work, but I can’t live on nothing."

Nicki’s partner is a farmer with no guaranteed income, and Nicki has the added strain of caring for her 91-year-old mother, who lives 25 miles away, all by herself as her sister is in lockdown. "I don’t think I’ve slept since the Thomas Cook collapse, it’s so stressful," she added. 

Katie gave up what she described as a ‘really well paid job’ last April to join Travel Counsellors and set up her own travel consultancy, working from home. Over the following nine months she lived off her savings getting the business off the ground, until at last, in January, the bookings started to pour in.

"It was a slow start, but I was just starting to breathe a sigh of relief in January and February, and then this happened," said Katie. She had hoped that Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s coronavirus support package for self-employed would provide her with some assistance, but unfortunately, like Nicki, she doesn’t qualify.

Sunak claimed that for the newly self-employed, like Katie, who have been trading for less than a year so haven’t been able to file a tax return, there is nothing he can do.

Instead, Sunak suggested they apply for Universal Credit, but Katie – like many others – doesn’t qualify for that either as her husband’s income is too high, but not high enough to cover all of their outgoings.

Which has left her with no choice but to go through her bank statement and cancel all ‘optional’ items, even, she said, charitable donations.

"Unfortunately I’ve fallen through the cracks, I don’t qualify for any help, so I’m trying to reduce or defer bills where I can but even this is difficult because creditors, like my mobile phone company, are so hard to get hold of the moment. 

She’s thought about finding another temporary job, such as applying to a supermarket – which are one of only a very few businesses still hiring during the lockdown, but between home schooling her nine-year-old and taking care of clients wanting to cancel or amend bookings or find emergency flights home – she has one customer stranded in India – she doesn’t have time.

"I’m sort of stuck between a rock and a hard place," she said. "I am obliged to look after my customers who want to move or amend or cancel their bookings, which is hard because of getting hold of suppliers, and navigating all of that makes me feel I can’t do another job."

She says she understands the government’s predicament, but feels that a flat, means-tested payment to everyone might have been a fairer solution. However, far from feeling sorry for herself, she acknowledges that she’s ‘in a better position than many’ and hopes to remain as a travel consultant. 

• See what benefits you can claim