The British Chambers of Commerce urged the UK government to overhaul the post-Brexit list of occupational shortages, after warning that many companies were struggling to recruit workers.
More than 60 per cent of companies said that they needed to find more staff in the UK, according to a survey of over 5,700 businesses published recently. But more than three quarters of groups seeking to recruit reported difficulties in hiring, the BCC found.
The construction sector reported the most severe recruitment challenges, with 83 per cent of businesses reporting difficulties. Many bosses blame the worker shortage on a combination of Brexit, which has stopped workers from the EU plugging gaps in the economy, and the pandemic, which has led people to reassess their priorities.
The government said: “Leaving the EU enabled us to introduce a points-based immigration system and we want to see employers make long term investments in the UK’s domestic workforce instead of relying on labour from abroad”, adding that: “We intend to commission the independent Migration Advisory Committee to review the shortage occupation list in due course.”
According to BCC director-general Shevaun Haviland, owners of restaurants were able to open only a few days a week “because they can’t get chefs, while construction firms [were] unable to find specialist groundwork drillers (fuelling 40 per cent wage rises), and IT firms cannot recruit cyber security experts”.
