The UK government has rejected industry calls to issue temporary visas to European truck drivers to ease the shortages which have played havoc with supply over the last few months.
Ministers turned a deaf ear to pleas from logistics and retail trade bodies for it to grant temporary working visas to heavy goods vehicle drivers from Europe, although the government accepted the need to look at offering more training courses to ease the shortage.
The news came over the weekend as the meat industry said it was responding to shortages in labour by making greater use of prisoners, according to the FT.
The effects of the ongoing shortage were laid bare in a joint letter to business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng by trade bodies Logistics UK and the British Retail Consortium. In the letter, the two estimated there was currently a shortfall of about 90,000 HGV drivers in the UK that was placing “increasingly unsustainable pressure on retailers and their supply chains”.
“The impact of the driver shortage is already being felt, with many businesses struggling to get goods into distribution centres and depots and — in some cases — into shops, with ramifications for consumer choice,” the bodies said in the letter.
The two bodies also warned the government the situation was likely to get worse before it gets better, citing a demand for goods increasing with the start of the new school year, employees returning to workplaces and the build-up to Christmas.
Alongside temporary visas, the two bodies also called for special government skills and training schemes to help alleviate the crisis as well as providing additional staff at the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency to deal with a backlog of testing would-be drivers.
While the driver shortage has been an issue since before the beginning of the summer, the only meaningful steps taken by the government has been relaxing rules limiting HGV driver hours.
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