While many self-employed people appeared to welcome the announcement that up to 80% of their earnings could be covered by the state during the coronavirus crisis, some said the measures did not offer enough immediate relief. In an eagerly awaited statement on Thursday, the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, said the self-employed would have to wait until June before they could get a maximum of £2,500 a month for three months. The package will be backdated to March and cover those earning up to £50,000. Thom Bartley, a 32-year-old photographer in Wolverhampton, said he was pleased that provisions had been made for the self-employed, but was concerned about the time delay until the payments are sent. “Personally, I’ll be OK, but I’ve got friends living paycheck to paycheck, who have got rent payments due soon, so I don’t know how that’s going to work,” he said. “It’s that delay which is the crippling thing – June is a long time away to have no income.” Sunak said the taxable grant would be based on the average monthly profits of the self-employed over three years, so people will need to have filed a tax return to be eligible. Bartley said that could put self-employed workers who are early on in their career in a difficult situation. “I’ve only filed three tax returns as a photographer, and the first year was so low because I was just starting out. If you’ve been self-employed for two years or less, then you don’t get anything, and in my experience they’re some of the more at-risk people. They’re young people who aren’t earning a lot of money,” he said. Bartley was also concerned about the long-term implication of coronavirus on self-employed people – something the chancellor’s package did not account for. “I don’t have much confidence that this will go back to normal after three months,” he said. Others had narrowly missed out on the support package due to one-off jobs that raised them above the threshold. Daniel Richards, 40, has a small building maintenance and decorating business in the West Midlands, but took on a large-scale project in 2018, which pushed his average up to just £4,000 above the threshold for aid. “We’re devastated, we’ve got no idea what we’re going to do,” he said. “We’ve got a couple of weeks of work and then it’ll be universal credit, but you can’t work when you do that so I’ll have to turn down jobs.” “I think people assume that we’re really well off so it doesn’t matter because we pay less tax, but we only pay 1.3% less tax and we don’t get sick pay, holiday pay, or that security. I haven’t been on holiday in two years, and I’ve worked 70 hours a week since I was 18, so it just feels unfair,” Richards said. “I’ve managed to flunk a lot of my exams, so academically I’m not attractive to employers, but if you’re self employed your hard work can take you somewhere. That’s the dream of the self employed, and they’re throwing it back in our face. And given us a tax rise,” he added. Michelle Baker, 50, who runs a small fudge business with her son, said she was concerned that the three months of support offered wasn’t long enough, and didn’t account for the seasonal variations. “I work in the events sector, and we make our money off shows in the summer. We earn our money in the summer and that’s our money for the winter, so if we don’t get any money in the summer, we won’t have any to live off in the winter,” she said. “It’s really a temporary fix, and I think it should have been done sector by sector,” she added. “No one really thinks about this industry.” The June delay was also causing problems for Baker and her son. “I’m going to have to ring my landlady and say, we’ll have the money in June, and just hope she’s understanding.”