As government officials in the United Kingdom look to institute tougher restrictions on immigration, labor experts are encouraging industries that rely on immigrants as employees to know how the proposed regulations could affect their workforce and recruitment.
Their most important form of advice? Look to see what potential hotel employees already reside in the United Kingdom legally.
On May 12, the U.K. government announced tougher rules and higher costs for those seeking to emigrate to and reside in the U.K. and for those wishing to hire them in a white paper titled “Restoring Control over the Immigration System.” Proposed rules include mandating more advanced education, higher skill levels and increased language requirements, as well as limiting dependents and family members of successful immigration candidates or for students wishing to continue their education in the U.K.
The European Union had been a generous pool for recruitment in U.K. hospitality jobs. To secure the personnel it requires in a people-facing business, the U.K. hotel industry has had to be flexible in recruitment since the U.K. left the European Union via Brexit in January 2020. But since then, the numbers of people emigrating to the country has increased, not decreased. That state of play often leaves many voters worried, regardless of argument that these newcomers are not taking the jobs U.K. citizens might seek themselves.
Reacting to U.K. voter concerns, the administration of Prime Minister Keir Starmer said it is seeking to reduce immigration by 100,000 per year by 2029.
Kate Nicholls, chief executive of UKHospitality, said the U.K. government should not pass the legislation without first improving and expanding the domestic apprenticeship scheme program, especially for an industry such as hospitality that is not widely championed by the British as a career path.
For the 12 months through June 2024, total immigration to the U.K. reached approximately 1.2 million, with nationals from the European Union now numbering approximately 116,000, or 10%, according to the U.K. Office of National Statistics.
Net migration, added to newborns born in the U.K., might see the overall U.K. population increase to 72.5 million by 2032, although net migration is falling from its height (full-year 2023) of 906,000. Approximately 728,000 people migrated to the U.K. in the full year to June 2024, according to the ONS.
At first glance, the U.K. government’s plans — which need to be passed into law in Parliament — will make it “harder than ever to recruit much-needed staff in areas such as … hospitality,” said Jonathan Beech, managing director of immigration-law specialists Migrate UK. The East Hendred, Oxfordshire-based firm works with many clients, including hotel companies.
Hospitality and other industries need to wean themselves off believing immigrants are the only route to recruitment, Beech said. He added hoteliers must familiarize themselves with which of their current employees are subject to immigration control and to what groups of immigrants are here that can work legally in the U.K.
“A lot of capital has been invested in these people. Do they need to be trained up?” Beech said. “Anyone within six months of their expiry, well, take very good care of them. When the new rules come out, they need to know their status.”
Beech added companies have already invested a lot in these staff members, and it will likely be more expensive to start a new search rather than retaining current employees.
“Some immigration routes are quite obscure, so do your homework,” he said.
Ben Brindle, a researcher at The Migration Observatory, part of the University of Oxford’s Center on Migration, Policy & Society, said there is no research that suggests higher costs do not deter people from their choice of where they would like to work and live. Brindle's Ph.D. thesis explored how the U.K. labor market responded to immigration in the decade following the 2008 global financial crisis.
At the moment, until more clarity is unveiled and the proposed legislation works its way through government, Beech said for employers it is “very much as you are.”
Higher hurdles
The current U.K. government is very much against migration limitations, Beech said.
“It is vehemently against them, as they have seen that they have been a failure under previous governments, but under the new plan immigrants would need an increased skill level known as [Regulated Qualifications Framework] 6, equivalent to university graduate level,” he said.
The current level is RQF3, equivalent to a high school education to the age of 18, Beech said.
Many migrants currently in the system would fall somewhere between RQF3 and RQF6, but Beech added there are other routes for employers looking to bring this group into hotel industry jobs with skills that might be unique to those born to other cultures and education systems.
“One thing to take away, and this is very important, is that all these changes are geared around sponsorships, and there are a lot of other immigration categories that allow people to work without being sponsored,” he said.
Such exemptions include immigrants on graduate vias, Ukrainian refugees and those with “indefinite leave to enter or remain,” including those within the EU Settlement Scheme, as well as the British themselves and the Irish, who for many decades have been able to work in the U.K. Beech said this pool included “many hundreds of thousands of people.”
Another hurdle is the timeline increases from five years to 10 years before immigrants can apply for settled status in the U.K., which contributes to an increased cost to employers because of the additional years of sponsorship, Beech said.
The Immigration Skills Charge is to be increased by 32% under Starmer’s proposals. Depending on their size, firms will pay between £2,400 ($3,171) and £6,600 ($8,720) to sponsor each employee coming from outside the U.K.
This increase in cost, Beech said, “is there and very present. It will one of the earliest rules to change. It will take 10 years to work to get settled status, not five, so that will double costs, in addition to employers paying the relevant administration and professional fees.”
This cost issue will be compounded by those immigrants already in the U.K. and employed who are working their way through existing rules, Beech said.
There also is provision for those with skills in the government’s Temporary Shortage List of occupations, which does not require satisfying the RQF6 requirements.
Yet another proposed change is to the Migration Advisory Committee, which reports to the government on the issue of immigration and the right to settle and work. Beech said one question is whether this committee is enough of a task force to speak to employers about what changes are needed in the U.K. and whether they can do that multiple times per year to keep up with the industry’s employment requirements.
Balancing needs
For U.K. hoteliers and other employers, the onus will be on how they can make training, work conditions and salaries more conducive to those who are already able to work in the U.K., Brindle said. Over the next few years, the interaction of migration policy, career choice and legal employment sources will become clearer.
“Are the skills coming out of education able to fill those employment gaps, and do employers have the necessary levers to pull?” Brindle said.
The newly created Labor Market Evidence Group will attempt to unite different areas of government policy in order to make sure there is a sufficient workforce to work in industries deemed nationally important, Brindle said. Of course, those jobs might be in construction, rather than behind a hotel check-in desk.
“The approach from government in so far as [immigrant visas, settled status and employment] are concerned is to largely shut them out of lower-level jobs, with a few exceptions,” Brindle said. “The aim being that rather than reaching for migration, industries would be looking to do other things such as improving working conditions and increasing training, but getting employers to pull some of these levers will be difficult.”
Roles such as chefs and restaurant managers are likely to see major declines in availability of people coming through the immigration system, Brindle said.
Beech reiterated that businesses should look at the employees they already have in-house, staff “who is already here.”
“To use a blunt term, these employees can be recycled. Business should be utilizing the skills already present,” Beech said.
He added that many hotel firms already are busy with graduates, two years or so before they would be required to sponsor them.
“These people should not be affected by the changes to the skill levels. They should be able to say within their skill codes,” he said.
Brindle agreed, adding it is important to remember there are people who have come to the U.K. but not on a work visa who can work legally, such as Ukrainians and students for up to 20 hours. But the burning question is how many people will there be in that group in any year, he said.
The June 2024 report on migration to the U.K. showed a growing number of people coming from India, Nigeria, the Philippines and Pakistan to work in health care and to attend school.
A concern for policymakers is that experience and history show there really is never a time when migration is not needed. Brindle said research still has not shown the link between migration and training.
Several hoteliers were approached for comment on this article, but at press time, none of them had responded.