UK Hospitality warns of need for more workers to work in healthcare

UK Hospitality is the top hospitality trade association in the UK. The association represents the interests of the hospitality sector in the UK.

The association has now given a warning that alerts people about a staffing crisis that the hospitality sector is facing currently. This happened while there are calls for the UK government to stick its roadmap for reopening the lockdown and lift all social distancing norms on June 21, 2021.

The trade body made a new analysis based on a survey that involved hundreds of operators in the hospitality industry. It suggests that the current rate of vacancy across the sector is 9%. It implies that there’s a shortage of 188,000 skilled people to work in UK in its hospitality sector.

Among the most acute shortages is that of chefs and front-of-house staff. 80% of participants in the survey brought forward vacancies for front-of-house roles. These include waiting and bar staff. Also, 85% reported the dire need for chefs to work in UK.

Around 47% of the respondents have vacancies in housekeeping. 43% of respondents are looking for assistant managers or general managers.

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UK Hospitality has urged the UK Government to stay true to its plan to remove all COVID-related restrictions on June 21, 2021. This way, the government will be able to restore confidence in the hospitality sector as well as give encouragement to workers to get back to work in the industry.

UK Hospitality has also made a call to introduce an 'Australian-style visa scheme'. They think that it will enable overseas workers who don’t meet the prescribed threshold imposed by the new UK immigration system that’s point-based, to come to the UK.

The survey showed revealed that overseas workers, chose not to return to the UK because of travel restrictions imposed by the UK government. Many of these workers had gone back home when the pandemic began in the UK. Close to a fifth said that they cannot consider coming back to work in UK as the cost of quarantine was unaffordable to them.

UK Hospitality's research follows recent data published by Fourth. This data revealed the impact of the pandemic. It also showed how post-Brexit immigration systems had caused a significant reduction in EU nationals being employed in the hospitality sector.

In the Q1 of 2021, the new starters from the EU constituted 34.9%, while it was 48.6% in the Q1 of 2019. In all, EU workers constituted 39.4% of the workforce in the hospitality sector in 2021. This was 43.4% in Q1 of 2019.

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