Industry quota of migrant workers to be cut by 10%

Fewer temporary low-skilled workers will be allowed to work in the UK hospitality industry via the sector-based schemes set up last June, the Government has announced.

The sector-based schemes were set up in a bid to help ease recruitment problems within the hospitality industry, but the quota of migrants allowed to work in the UK under the schemes will now be cut by 25% across hospitality and food manufacturing. For the hospitality industry this means 9,000 such workers will be able to be employed in the sector, compared with 10,000 last year.

But some 1,100 of those people last year came from the new European Union (EU) member countries and will no longer need to use the scheme.

Migrants from the 10 new EU member states who have worked in the same job in the UK for less than a year up to 1 May will need to register with the Home Office under a worker registration scheme. This will include those people who came to the UK on the sector-based scheme.

Source: Caterer & Hotelkeeper magazine, 27 May - 2 June 2004