AFAIK there are some major discrepancies in the application of government assistance. If you work through the CIS tax scheme (as do most self-employed working on major sites) and your site is still open you are apparently not eligible for any assistance and must continue to attend unless or until the government intervenes to close us down. There are already shortages in the statutory required PPE for many trades due to a combination of the JIT distribution system now prevalent in the UK and the panic buying which has ensued since the start of this whole thing.
Getting stopped twice or more times a day and having to carry photo ID together with a letter identifying myself and stating why I am travelling (this came in on the 26th) is already becoming rather wearing especially as many policemen seem to be completely unaware of the exact nature of of the lock down and who can and cannot travel and are seemingly hell bent on making life difficult for us (several colleagues have been threatened with fines already)
Neither I nor my colleagues are keen to go to work and risk catching Corovid-19, but we are being told (by the DWP) that if we don't we'll possibly be considered to have made ourselves deliberately unemployed and may therefore be subject to sanctions (up to 6 weeks suspension of eligibility to Universal Credit). At that point we will become eligible for £94 per week UC - NOT the 80% of income that many others have already received.
If someone knows better than we do, please post here, but the measures announced to date don't do anything for up to a million construction workers on PAYE or CIS
