Businesses in Glasgow have raised concerns they will not be able to re-open under the social distancing rules.

A survey found a number were not confident the two metre rule would allow them to re-open safely.

Glasgow Chamber of Commerce surveyed 200 firms in the city and almost half said it would be a problem.

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One in five(21%) said they could not operate while almost one in four (24%) said they did not know if they could under current rules because trading space would be too tight.

Glasgow Times:

Stewart Patrick, chief executive of Glasgow Chamber of Commerce, said greater guidance was needed

He said: “Largely this is about what is going to be needed for businesses to start reopening in a safe way under social distancing rules.

“The results of this survey show there is not going to be a swift return to normal working for many Glasgow businesses. This implies there must be longer-term support for them, which supports the view that tapering of the Job Retention Scheme (JRS) is important.”

He said without continued support there would be redundancies

Mr Patrick, added: “There must be no cliff-edge on JRS, as the Chancellor has said. But it must not be switched off in July, rather we could be talking about well into the summer in Glasgow and in Scotland.”

Mr Patrick said almost two thirds of Glasgow firms were using the job retention (furlough) scheme.

He added: “It’s vital that we help businesses to open up using social distancing because 55% say they could operate under those rules, but we also must acknowledge that over a fifth don’t think they can.”