Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news
- Latest: Iceland boss warns that supply chain problem threaten Christmas
- Need to put HGV drivers on skilled workers list, he says
- Richard Walker: Self-inflicted wound after Brexit
Earlier:
- Supply chain crisis affecting retailers stocks and food ranges
- UK plunges towards supply chain crisis due to staff and transport disruption
- Coop boss: Food shortages worst I have seen
Christmas is at risk from the supply chain crisis unless the government adds HGV drivers to its skilled worker list quickly, the managing director of supermarket chain Iceland has warned this morning.
We’ve had deliveries cancelled for the first time since the pandemic began, about 30 to 40 deliveries a day.
Of course we’ve got Christmas around the corner, and in retail we start to stockbuild really from September onwards for what is a hugely important time of year.
We’ve got a lot of goods to transport between now and Christmas, and a strong supply chain is vital for everyone.
These men and women, these HGV drivers, have kept the show on the road for 18 months during the pandemic and it’s criminal that we’re not viewing them as skilled workers.
It’s not a light switch that’ll happen overnight.
I think the market will correct itself. But the problem with bringing in UK workers is that will take six months.
We need to find these people, train them up, they need to get Class One licences. We’ve got Christmas to sort out between now and then.
The average age of a HGV driver is 56. We need to recruit more domestically, but that will take time. In the meantime, let’s get them on the skilled worker list so that we can bring more drivers and get our supply chains running.
The supply chain crisis is also hitting the UK tourism sector, as hoteliers and bar owners try to juggle a surge in holidaymakers and staff shortages.
“Hospitality is the first to get locked down and the last to reopen and a lot of people have not been able to get onto furlough and have struggled. It is really hard to find chefs.
“We’ve reduced covers, we’ve reduced opening hours and on a day-to-day basis we’ve had to look at how many staff we have got in and manage it accordingly.”
“You can substitute drinks a lot more easily than food. It’s just random stuff that is not available – it’s just bizarre.
“Guacamole, tortilla chips and one week it was orange juice and another week it was apple juice and cranberry juice. It is random stuff and it is just down to distribution.”
“Traditionally we would normally have thousands of people from EU countries here working in hospitality having been trained in their own countries and that has more or less been cut off entirely.
“We used to have lots of people from northern cities working in places like Newquay for the summer and they problem they have is there is no housing as every landlord who has got a rental property has converted it into a holiday let.
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