Expert Insight
NEWS from
Kate Nicholls UKHospitality Chief Executive
It was nothing less than remarkable to be able to reveal at UKHospitality’s inaugural Workforce and Skills Event that our sector now employs a record number of people in food service and accomodation– that’s despite all the travails faced by hospitality in the last three years.
But’s it’s true: no less a body than the Office for National Statistics says there are now 2.6m people employed in that category, and that’s not counting the additional jobs the sector
provides in contract catering, leisure and visitor attractions. Hospitality jobs up 10% in just over a year – that’s nearly 250,000 net new jobs – which is 22% of all net new jobs across the economy in the past 12-months.
That hospitality has been able to create more than 20% of new jobs in the past year, in the face of extraordinary cost pressures, is testament to our sector’s resilience and its ability to battle against seemingly insurmountable odds.
We have to do more, though, with hospitality job vacancies remaining close to record levels – two-thirds higher than pre-pandemic – and with 146,000 jobs waiting to be filled.
Staffing, then, is a crucial matter for us, and one of the reasons we staged our first Workforce and Skills Event, in London, which brought together UKHospitality members to share the latest information and updates from a broad range of workforce and skills initiatives.
Among the speakers at the event was Hospitality Minister Kevin Hollinrake MP, who provided an update on the Government’s Hospitality Recovery Strategy; a strategy that was undoubtedly a seismic shift in the way
government perceives hospitality, as was the introduction of a Minister with specific responsibility for the sector.
Announced exclusively at our Workforce and Skills Event, the update revealed the substantial progress that has already been made in the hospitality sector’s recovery and its move towards a more resilient future – all in spite of the massive shocks our industry has been subjected to.
The work done following the publication of the strategy illustrates the clear value in government working closely with hospitality on key issues affecting the sector, but there’s still more to do to meet our mutual objectives.
Indeed, we believe there’s more that the Government can do on the workforce front, and UKHospitality has proposed reform of the Apprenticeship Levy system, to give businesses more control over how they train their staff, whilst making the system more
flexible to support seasonal workers, those who want to learn in a different way, and those who want to front- or backload their learning.
We’ve also made pragmatic proposals for immigration system reform to plug the gaps in our workforce caused by the pandemic.
So we’ll continue to work with the Government, and hope that Spring Budget will go some way to helping us get more people into work and training. UKHospitality would also like to see the Chancellor tackle three other key short-term issues – energy, business rates and VAT – whilst providing longer-term headroom and flexibility for hospitality businesses to invest in people, places and in growth.
And while workforce continues to be a major challenge for the sector, we’ll work hard to support out sector in every way we can, including lobbying government to get the right policies in place.
6
March 2023
www.venue-insight.com
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52
