Growers fly in pickers to bridge farm work gap amid coronavirus pandemic

Britain normally recruits about 80,000 migrant seasonal workers to harvest fruit and vegetables, but the crisis has placed travel restrictions on many scheduled air, train and bus services.

Local recruitment

A spokesperson for Concordia, a recruitment agency part of the Alliance for Ethical Labour Providers, said it had looked at chartered flights but was focused on local recruitment after more than 33,000 UK-based workers had applied for jobs.

The spokesperson said: “Around 16 per cent of applicants are completing the recruitment process and of those who are successful, 14 per cent are accepting the roles offered.

“We are working hard to support growers through this challenging period and are enthused to see so many people from the UK interested in working on farms.”

Skilled

Ms Dickson added the firm was working closely with Public Health England on safe transport arrangements and said the group would be fully screened on arrival in to the UK.

She said: “But the fact remains that despite the success of our recruitment campaign, this is a huge operation and we need the experience of skilled migrant labourers to complete the harvest.”

CLA president Mark Bridgeman echoed this and said bringing in workers from overseas, where safe and possible, was the ’right thing to do’.

He said: "We strongly encourage people from across the country to keep coming forward and signing up with recruitment agencies but if we want to keep supermarkets stocked, migrant labour will be needed to ensure fruit and vegetables are picked on time this summer."