The exodus of EU truck drivers from the UK since Brexit has left the British transport and logistics industry facing severe staff shortages and a looming crisis in industrial and retail deliveries, the sector has warned.
Industry associations and leading UK shipping companies said that unless urgent steps were taken to address the shortage, the pressures now evident within the industry would become clear to the public by the end of the summer.
While the sector has suffered from a chronic driver shortage in recent decades, this shortage has become acute thanks to the “triple whammy” of Brexit’s hiring freeze, a coronavirus driving test backlog, and self-employment tax reforms that have exacerbated the problem. The flow of drivers in the European Union.
“Britain has suffered from a chronic driver shortage for many years, but the problem has now become acute. “During 10 years of campaigning, “On this issue, we have never seen members as concerned as they are now.”
The cancellation of an estimated 28,000 HGV driver tests as a result of Covid-19 restrictions has also frustrated efforts to expand local driver recruitment to a pool of around 300,000 qualified lorry drivers in the UK.
Rod McKenzie, managing director of policy and public affairs at the Road Haulage Association, said the industry was now facing a perfect storm. “For the public, unlike the industry, this is a calm storm, but it may soon turn into a hurricane with obvious shortages, leading to escalating stress and tension between suppliers and carriers,” he said.
The end of the Covid-19 lockdown, which caused a sharp rise in demand from retail, construction and hospitality, has exposed a problem that had remained hidden due to the drop in demand caused by the pandemic, transport chiefs said.
Paul Day, managing director of Turners Soham Ltd, a major trucking company with 2,300 lorries in Cambridgeshire and whose driver force is made up of about 40 per cent eastern Europeans, said cracks were already starting to appear.
“Within three months, the goods will not be delivered. In fact, this is already happening, there are already loads that are not covered now,” he said, pointing to a major retailer and a major supplier of building materials that failed to cover 30 loads last week.
Lee Juniper, operations director at FreshLinc, another large UK logistics operator with a portfolio of nearly 700 trucks, said the shortage was real and was now pushing up hourly pay rates by 10 to 30 percent depending on the region and type of transport involved. .
“We can’t get enough drivers to drive our trucks, and it’s a daily challenge to cover the large volumes. Continuing to deliver loads on time and according to customers’ schedules is a constant struggle,” he said.
Last month, Grocer, a trade publication, reported that wholesalers had capped deliveries to some Spar convenience stores in central regions where the driver shortage was keenly felt.
The driver shortage is an early test of the government’s post-Brexit immigration policies, which prioritize high-skilled immigration and make it legally impossible to employ foreign HGV drivers, a profession not considered skilled enough to be eligible for a skilled worker visa.
Kieran Smith, chief executive of recruitment agency Driver Require, said their research suggested that between 12,000 and 15,000 EU drivers had already returned home, partly due to the Covid-19 pandemic and partly due to tax changes.
Many were self-employed, operating as small limited companies to reduce their tax burden, but this has now been stopped following the so-called IR35 reforms by HMRC which require all contractors with a turnover of more than £10m or 50 employees to pay tax. Complete and national insurance for their drivers.
While the reforms were widely welcomed by the industry, they were adding to the exodus of EU drivers who would not accept the lower income that comes with regularizing their tax status.
“The initial departure was driven by Covid, but we estimate another 5,000 to 10,000 are leaving now due to IR35. “Many have not paid the correct limited company tax, but even with wage inflation, this is still not enough to get the same net income,” he said. “.
Businesses and industry associations have pushed hard for HGV drivers to be placed on a list of occupations in shortage, but the government has made clear it will not do so, after saying companies must “adapt” to the post-Brexit immigration system.
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Day, boss of Turners, which has been actively recruiting in the EU since 2005 and has its own driver training program in the UK, said this was still the simplest solution due to the six-month time involved in recruiting and training UK drivers and motorists. . Limited availability of candidates.
“The government needs to act before things get out of hand. If the government doesn’t change its position on this, it will put 15 to 20 per cent on UK transport costs. Is this something the UK public company is really prepared for?” He said.
Fitch said the government needed to do more to support UK employment policy to pick up the slack left by EU drivers, including prioritizing canceled driving tests and providing grants to cover the cost of driver training.
The government said it had begun a campaign to recruit an additional 300 examiners, with testing agency DVSA now providing 4,000 tests each week.
However, across the industry, the Financial Times heard significant skepticism that local hiring could fill the gaps in the short term, while in the longer term it was not clear whether enough UK workers would embrace an industry with long working hours and conditions. It’s a tough job, even if it’s paid. Rates increased.
Driver Require’s Smith added that analysis of data from the Office for National Statistics showed a “catastrophic decline” over the past 20 years in the number of qualified HGV drivers based in an industry where almost a third of the 300,000 drivers are over 55. He is heading for retirement.
“We have this group of 150,000 drivers over the age of 50 heading into retirement, and behind that group is a severely depleted workforce. There is not much we can do in the short term except prepare for the impact.”
