By Angela Green: Workforce bombshell due to hit hospitality and catering this April.
Government plans to reduce migration will see an increase in the minimum salary requirement for a skilled worker visa increase from £18,600 to £29,000 in April 2024, and further increased to £38,700 by spring 2025.
Prior to these new rules a skilled-worker visa was available to employers that could show recruiting domestically was not possible. An employer could pay the government £3,000 for a licence to hire someone from overseas on a temporary visa and pay them a salary of £18,600, or more.
Last year the hospitality and catering industry successfully recruited circa 8,500 skilled workers from overseas into essential positions of work to counter the acute shortage of people and skills in the UK workforce. The new legislation will see a requirement placed on employers that want to employ more workers from overseas to fill gaps in our home workforce need to raise salaries by 56%. This is clearly impossible.
The latest data from the Office for National Statistics shows 116,000 unfilled job vacancies across Accommodation & Food Services.
2024 has already seen countless business closures across our industry, high profile restaurants, golf clubs, hotels, pubs and many more.
This week on Good Morning Britain restaurateur Simon Rimmer highlighted an incredible dilemma. Rimmer’s Greens restaurant in Didsbury was open for 33 years, it survived two recessions, and prior to closure was busy. The problem Rimmer explained was he could no longer afford to stay open, the cost of ‘doing’ business forced him to close Greens.
Cost pressures are mounting by the day, by adding further labour costs this April, government will accelerate the closure rate.
The government is no longer working on managing the economy, instead it is focused solely on internal ideology squabbles. This move, closing the doors to much needed skilled people adding to our economy is nothing more than a token gesture from the Home Secretary and Prime Minister to pacify the right wing in their party, who want to reduce migration whatever the cost to the country.
