Staff shortages are now a national crisis

[Confusedofbritain]

Staff shortages across many sectors is now a national crisis surely? I’ve given up expecting anything of this government, but why isn’t Labour beating them with a stick over this?

Some examples which affect me personally….

• Can’t go on holiday due to cancelled flight, cause by lack of ground staff.
• I work for NHS trust and we have closed a ward due to c 50% vacancies. We have plenty of money but can’t spend it. Now competing with other trusts paying increasingly high golden handshakes.
• Tried to book restaurant for Tuesday birthday. Not possible as all places shut Monday and Tuesday due to short staff (esp chefs).
• Poor service when we do go out. Staff look frazzled.
• Can’t get a builder to do an extension. Often not bothering to quote. Builder friend can’t keep labourers and brickies. Paying increasingly high wages but getting poached.
• Window fitter quoted me 2x higher than 2019 (for a much smaller window!) probably because they’re so busy and can’t increase capacity due to lack of staff. So prices have gone up by 100%.
• Long delay in discharge for father from hospital, due to long waits for care package (caused by staff shortages). He was in hospital a lot longer than necessary and declined hugely as result.

It’s largely caused by Brexit, partly people retiring or changing livelihood during Covid…:.but why wasn’t this anticipated and what are we doing about it?

I want to see posters EVERYWHERE encouraging people to consider NHS careers. It’s a rewarding career, but impossible to cope and keep going with so few staff. We are escalating to NHS England constantly, saying we need a national solution. It’s beyond critical, but I’m not confident that there is a national drive to sort this out.

The economic and social consequences of ignoring this massive structural issue will be disastrous!

No taxis anywhere anymore god knows why. Noticed it at the start of lockdown. Before i could get an Uber or bolt within 3 minutes now it's always 17 minutes or busy. If I ring an actual cab station there's no drivers. I'm in Surrey frequently but London mainly and out of the 8 cab stations that are dotted about this borough they have 10 drivers between them and 2 have been brought by a rival company.

@Swayingpalmtrees is "anti mask" what a bloody surprise. Please tell us more - let's hear how you feel about vaccines (covid or otherwise) I bet it's hilarious.

Many people on this thread seem to blame the cost of childcare as a reason not to work and claim benefits.
So what is the solution?

In many European countries, a d also Australia I think, childcare is government-subsidised.

@Alexandra2001 I hear you. When you want a kfc you want the whole package not bits and bobs . 😂

Reading people's stories on here about being unable to find builders,
vets, GPs, having to travel for specialist medical care, plus another recent thread about lack of dental facilities - it's interesting how this differs across areas of the country. I think we all know in general that in SE housing prices are higher and so are salaries - but would be interesting to see it all mapped out as to areas where people are just unable to get access to basic services .

Wow, what a breathtakingly stupid comment.

You know that some people on benefits are in work?

Some are single parents for whom the wrap around care would cost more than they’d earn?

Some have serious illnesses like cancer or disabilities that limit what they can do. Some are parents of children with disabilities - not even always possible to get paid care for them.

Some are unpaid carers. If they went off to work, who would look after the people they care for? It would cost a LOT more to have a carer working FT on living wage and for the state to pick up the tab for the care. And a lot of unfilled vacancies are in the care system.

But it’s easy to parrot dumb sound bites isn’t it?

@shinynewapple22 I'm Midlands and can't get a dentist, I have but can't get an appt with a GP for around 3 weeks, and it's taken me from January until now to get a builder, who can't start until August. I'm a childcare provider and have people begging me daily for space but I'm booked until 2024.

We can't get support staff such as 1:1 LSAs or dinner staff. The pay is shocking and the stress is high. They risk being verbally or physically abused each day.

People prefer to not work or to do supermarket or a few days a week admin. The pay is better and they often have much more flexibility

There’s never a staff shortage when you pay well enough. The UK has got away with wage stagnation for too long. Basic admin and middle management salaries are similar now to when I left uni around 20 years ago, but costs have risen dramatically nationally. Those employers that pay properly can still recruit.

Oh and local bus services are being axed each day. It costs £56 a month to send DS to school on the bus, and I've had to take DD myself since covid as they never put her bus back on (4 miles away).

When people say the NHS is unsustainable/shouldn't exist, I genuinely wonder what their agenda is because it's so obviously not true that I have to think either 1) they're very stupid and believe some type of propaganda or 2) they have a vested interest in a private system and see the NHS as a barrier to amassing vast wealth from people's ill-health and misery. Of course, no.2 applies to the Tories, in spades.

The 'Polish cleaner' story is hilarious.

Vets can't. Well, I suppose if they offered double they might attract a few more from abroad, but no clients would ever be able to afford the increased fees, and charities, like ours, would go under.

I meant to quote foolsrule

A local cafe has closed because they can’t find full time staff. £10 an hour and people dont want to work.

they’re either too lazy or better off on the state. There can’t be any other reason.

There must be a knock on from when DCs stayed on at school and/ or went to uni so instead of thousands doing apprenticeships / working there were several years with no feed in to fill future skills. On top of that having incomers doing the work. Now we've a huge deficit.

Or they're getting £13 an hour at the hotel up the road.

Yet my DC, both with brilliant GCSE's and A levels, still can't get a job for the summer and beyond!
Nobody seems to want them!

@SweetMystery strange, I guess it depends where you live. But everywhere around here there are jobs for the taking. You might have to apply online, but it’s worth doing a walk around shops/ venues and even reaching out to people who work in offices to see if there’s temp work.

I wish Justine had asked Boris this question!

"See also the BMA who did the same with medical training places a few years ago."

I thought caps on training places were administered by the Government.

The BMA is a trade union - they don't run or fund medical school & training places. In fact for many years they campaigned for an increase in both places and the necessary funding.

I agree that we need to wean ourselves off cheap labour, but won't a high wage economy will push up costs and make the UK less competitive as an exporter? It'll also push up prices generally, which means that those in work will be paid more but won't see the benefit of a rise in standard of living, and those on fixed incomes will be a lot worse off. High UK prices would also discourage a lot of foreign tourists, which means less revenue for that sector.

Not sure if this is mentioned but covid has a place in there too.
Long covid is currently affecting 2 millions people. About 400.000 are severely affected.
The Bank of England mentioned not long ago how long covid would negatively affects the economy…..

This is another issue on the top of Brexit, immigration, lack of training etc etc….

Its scary to think that it might well get even worse if we continue to take no measures at all.

on sky news now, Ryan air are having problems with staff who will be striking through the summer unless the pay is increased to a proper wage. Says it all.

Employers want to pay peanuts for long, inflexible hard work in a time when costs are so high. They are making record profits so no need not to pay staff properly

No reasons apart from all the ones given in this thread…..

It has to be because people are lazy.

Before we had high unemployment but that was because people were lazy and were not truly looking - despite having a much higher number if people looking for jobs vs places offered.
Now we have more job offers than people looking for jobs and the reason why some jobs are not fulfilled is because …. people are lazy.

I suppose it makes thing easy. If there is a problem, then it’s because of laziness even if situation are exact opposite of each other