Government plans to help find an army of British baristas, waitresses and chefs to replace EU workers have been criticised after it emerged they will not be introduced for five years.

The British Hospitality Association has written to the immigration minister Brandon Lewis expressing dismay that plans for a new qualification in hospitality will not be introduced until 2022.

The organisation says it will mean restaurants, hotels, pubs and clubs will come under threat as they struggle to find British workers when freedom of movement is proposed to end in 2021.

The BHA has also written to the education minister Anne Milton telling her the decision to wait five years before launching the new apprenticeship would be a disaster for pubs, restaurants, hotels and takeaway chains that rely heavily on EU workers.

Her letter comes just months after Pret a Manger, not a member of the BHA, revealed that only one in 50 job applicants were British.

It said it would find it virtually impossible to find staff if it were forced to turn its back on EU baristas and sandwich makers after Brexit.

“We are not in a position to fill these vacancies without hiring non-UK workers,” Ufi Ibrahim, the chief executive of the BHA, said in her letter to Lewis.

“This is due to the fact that the UK is currently at near full employment and because the educational system does not encourage young people to consider a career in hospitality.

“It was my hope that the new catering and hospitality T-level would address the latter point so I was dismayed to find out that these qualifications have been delayed,” she said.

Her letter to Milton points out that 12% of the workforce in the sector is from the EU, including 75% of all waiting staff.



The BHA has significant clout, with 45,000 members employing 3.2 million workers in businesses ranging from Nando’s chicken chain to Heston Blumenthal’s three Michelin star Fat Duck in the restaurant sector; Hilton, Radisson and Four Seasons in the hotel sector and Whitbread and Butlins in the pub and entertainment sector.

Ibrahim said the decision to have a transition period after Brexit was welcome but the industry was so reliant on EU workers that two years would not be enough time to generate the 260,000 British staff a year needed.

“We do not think it’s enough time for a business to have made a significant shift especially as the T-level is not coming in time to put in place a British workforce which is why this decision to delay this T-level is very, very concerning and a significant risk to our business,” she told the Guardian.

She said that unlike other sectors, automation or robots were not an option in hospitality.

“Without a chef, you simply don’t have a restaurant,” she said.

The industry welcomed the new T-level technical qualifications when they were unveiled by the chancellor, Philip Hammond, in March as part of the government effort to replace migrant labour and meet tough immigration targets of “tens of thousands” a year.

But it now transpires that the first round of T-levels will not be introduced until September 2022 meaning newly qualified staff would not be available until 2023 at the earliest, depending on the length of training.

Ibrahim urges Milton to reconsider, pointing out that recent research it commissioned by KPMG consultants warned that a “cliff-edge” scenario would leave the industry with a shortfall of 1 million workers.