Hospitality in the news

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Your latest instalment of articles and opinions from across the hospitality sector.

Thinking differently

We are happy to be back enjoying the "al fresco" delights of restaurants and pubs, but were concerned to read that the hospitality industry faces a severe staff shortage. This is on top of the deeply worrying UK beer shortage highlighted below! Despite a large number of businesses not surviving multiple COVID-19 lockdowns, many restaurant and pub businesses are struggling to hire staff. The UK hospitality industry has always relied on a large percentage of the workforce being EU nationals – pre-COVID, 12-14% of the workforce was from Europe. A combination of Brexit and the pandemic has meant that, especially in London, there is now a shortage of EU nationals to work in the hospitality sector. Over 1.3m EU nationals left the UK during the pandemic and the post-Brexit tightening of immigration rules means that visas and a salary of £36,700 a year are required for new EU workers to enter the country. There are other factors at play, for example, a large number of hospitality workers who lost their jobs moved into alternate employment and are now hesitant to return. It will be interesting to see if the UK government puts forwards any proposals to deal with this issue, especially as allowing indoor dining is the next step in the road map out of lockdown.