Food manufacturers supplying the hospitality and healthcare markets have called for urgent Government support to rescue them from ‘a financial cliff edge’.
A group of 18 trade associations, led by the British Frozen Food Federation (BFFF), has written to chancellor of the exchequer Rishi Sunak and other Government ministers. They have asked for the following support measures to be put in place for food manufacturers with immediate effect:
Extension of the 12-month Local Authority Business Rates exemption to businesses supplying into the hospitality and foodservice market, using the existing legislative exemption for hardship.
Ongoing capital and tax break allowances to maintain the workforce, prorated depending on how many staff a company can keep employed.
In an effort to fill the breach left by Brexit, the UK government has increased to 30,000 the number of visas it will issue to seasonal agricultural workers. The visas, however, come at a high price, and Romanians and Bulgarians, as well as Estonians, Lithuanians and Slovenians, will pay more for them than other EU citizens.
The UK government has extended a seasonal workers pilot programme, first launched in 2019, for an additional year. It has also expanded the programme, with 30,000 visas set to be made available for those wanting to come and work on UK farms for a period of up to six months in 2021.
The UK government has announced that 30,000 seasonal worker visas will be made available for 2021, enabling EU and non-EU workers to enter Britain to help pick and pack fruit and vegetables. The number will treble the amount of seasonal worker visas made available in 2020.
The UK seasonal worker visa program was initially launched as a pilot in 2019, and has now been extended by a further 12 months. The extension will apply to EU and non-EU workers once freedom of movement from the European mainland ends on 1 January 2021.
The UK government’s announcement comes following a challenging harvest season in 2020, with farmers fearing that fruit and vegetables would be left to rot in fields as the industry struggled to attract worker numbers.
Defra extends Seasonal Workers Pilot to 30,000 visas
23 December 2020 |
The government has extended the Seasonal Workers Pilot for another year and expanded its size
The number of farm workers allowed to travel to the UK to pick fruit and vegetables will be trebled for the 2021 harvest, the government has announced.
The Seasonal Workers Pilot has been extended and expanded for an additional year, from 10,000 visas to 30,000 for 2021.
The scheme, first announced in 2018, gives farming businesses the opportunity to employ migrant workers for up to six months.
The UK requires around 80,000 seasonal farm workers every year and the Office for National Statistics has stated that 99% of these come from countries within the EU.