Hospitality May be Added to Shortage Occupation List to Tackle Staffing Crisis

Ministers are understood to be considering adding the hospitality sector to the shor t of occupation list (SoL) to help alleviate the sectors chronic staffing issues

According to repor ts ministers have asked the Migration Advisor y Committee (MAC) for advice on whether the hospitality, construction and retail industries should be on the list of sectors where there is a shor tage of workers, helping them to recruit from overseas

Earlier this month UKHospitality revealed that a record 2 6 million people are now employed in accommodation and foodser vice , with the sector creating one in five new jobs – despite crippling vacancies and staff shor tages

The trade body said there was significant job creation taking place in the sector now and insisted there was “the potential to go even further”

But it said that would only be possible with the right action at the Spring Budget and has called on chancellor Jeremy Hunt to implement two key measures

The first is to reform the Apprenticeship Levy to enable funding to be used for other forms of training and to change its operation to offer greater flexibility to employers and employees over training – and incentivise economically inactive people into work

The second is to implement minor, shor t-term immigration reforms to counter the sales being lost due to labour shor tages, par ticularly abolishing or reducing the Immigration Skills Charge and offering more flexibility to students to work longer hours

UKHospitality chief executive Kate Nicholls said:

“The ability of hospitality businesses to create more than 20% of new jobs in the past year, in the face of extraordinar y cost pressures, is testament to its resilience and ability to battle against the odds

“Employing a record number of people is something we should all be proud of, especially when those figures don t include the hundreds of thousands employed in broader contract catering, leisure and visitor attractions

“If we can do this now, just think what we can do in calmer economic times We can be the engine behind significant job creation and economic growth, offering ever yone oppor tunities to enter the workplace , further their career or return from being economically inactive ”

Jeremy Hunt ordered the workforce review amid concerns the economy is being held back by shor tages of workers that have emerged since the pandemic and Brexit

On the 24 Januar y 2022 the government introduced changes to the rules confirming that Care Workers were added to the UK’s “Shor tage

Occupation” list She now enables them to apply for Skilled Worker visas, under the new Points Based Immigration System They will remain eligible for this route , initially for a 12-month period only

The MAC offers independent advice to the Home Office on immigration policy and produces repor ts on whether cer tain occupations should or shouldn’t be given some special dispensations to make it easier for employers to access migrant labour to fill vacancies

Pre-pandemic , it produced a damning repor t recommending chefs be reduced from the shor tage occupation list and saying the failure of employers to improve the domestic pipeline and hostile working environments spoke against keeping chefs on the list The repor t was criticised by operators and trade bodies who have said it was “hardly surprising” the industr y struggled to fill roles with UK candidates when cheffing was branded “low skill” Chefs are now eligible for a skilled worker visa

A petition last year calling for a hospitality worker visa scheme gained more than 18,000 signatures, however the Home Office said there were no plans to introduce a visa route for recruitment “at or near the minimum wage with relatively shor t training” and that businesses “should invest in and develop the UK’s domestic labour force”