According to other famous virologists, this is a risky strategy to play. This is an RNA virus, this means that you cannot safely assume that the population will be immune after the first infection.
I don't like to give the UK government the benefit of the doubt. This seems like an exceptionally poor set of decisions that where made. There is a lot of confusion at workplace's with some companies making the right decision to send staff home that can work remote and others not sure what to do, all the while putting life's at risk.
At my company, in the UK, there has been so far no communication on Covid-19 apart from an email more than a week ago to tell us to self-isolate if we recently came back from China and are having symptoms.
That it's it. Not even planning for working for home.
They are calmly announcing that their plan is to let tens of millions of people, if not hundreds of millions across Europe and beyond, be infected with a disease that has a 2% fatality rate.