William Hill is to repay £24.5 million of furlough funds received from the government as a result of the strength of the recovery over the past month. The betting group said that having been able to use the furlough scheme to protect the jobs of its 7,000 retail employees during lockdown, it now felt it was “appropriate” to repay the cash. The company also revealed that it had decided to close a further 119 betting shops permanently due to the pandemic and the continuing shift from retail to online betting. Last year it was forced to close more than 700 shops in response to the government’s imposition of a £2 stake limit on fixed-odds betting terminals and at the beginning of this year its estate

Source: The Times August 05, 2020 07:52 UTC