Rishi Sunak on Wednesday unveiled new funding to improve lorry parking facilities and pledged to reduce the levies paid by haulage companies, but the logistics industry said none of the measures would ease the labour shortages that are driving the country’s supply chain crisis.
The chancellor said most of the global energy issues and supply chain blockages were outside the UK’s control but “where the government can ease these pressures, we will act”.
In the Budget, the Treasury maintained a freeze on fuel duty and extended the suspension of the heavy-goods vehicle road user levy, as well as freezing vehicle excise duty until 2023.
While welcoming the support David Wells, chief executive at Logistics UK, said the measures did not even acknowledge, let alone address, how tight the supply of labour is across the UK economy.
“Do I see anything in there about the longer term issues? If I’m honest, then no,” he said. “We have to do more to increase the number of available people in the labour market or the economy will be constrained.”
The lorry driver shortage, estimated at 100,000 people by the Road Haulage Association, has contributed to the severest supply chain crisis in decades. It has led to gaps on supermarket shelves, backlogs at ports and threatens to delay the delivery of Christmas gifts.
Poor driver facilities has been one of the key reasons for people leaving the sector, along with unsociable hours and low wages, but Wells believes the government funding of £32.5m would not be enough to address the shortfall of 1,400 extra parking spaces the haulage industry needs. “I can’t see it making a substantial difference . . . It might paint the white lines,” he said.
The support came as Baroness Charlotte Vere, under-secretary of state for transport, estimated on Wednesday that it would take until the end of next year to ease the country’s “acute” supply chain crisis because of bottlenecks in the training of new drivers.
“Trying to get a handle on exactly what the acute shortage of drivers are versus the long-term systemic shortage is tricky. We think it’s probably around 35,000,” she told a meeting of the House of Commons transport select committee.
“By the end of 2022, I expect . . . all being well, there should no longer be anything you can refer to as an acute crisis.”
According to the RHA, there was a systemic shortage of 60,000 drivers before the pandemic. This was exacerbated by European workers leaving the country because of Brexit, dropouts during the pandemic and a large testing backlog built up over eight months.
Sunak’s Budget announcements add to a package of 25 measures already taken by the Department for Transport, including allowing longer working hours and tackling a large backlog of tests.
Vere said the Driver & Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) has been increasing tests to 3,550 a week for vocational drivers, which include HGVs, buses and coaches, up from 1,500 before the pandemic.
But she added that the next bottleneck was emerging, as haulage companies raced to train drivers quickly enough to get tests. “The next challenge will be will we have people to fill those slots?” she said, adding that 26,000 drivers leave the industry every year.
A U-turn on immigration last month — another of the DoT’s measures — allowed temporary visas for 5,000 foreign lorry drivers as a stop-gap measure to cope with the seasonal boom in demand, but was dismissed as insufficient by the haulage industry.
Source: Economy - ft.com
