The Alliance has responded to the Lord’s EU Home Affairs Sub-Committee inquiry Brexit: movement of people in the fields of sport and culture inquiry. In our response we stressed that there are significant numbers of non-UK EU citizens that work in the heritage sector in England in a variety of capacities, and UK companies and citizens who work in heritage in other EU countries. This two-way exchange of expertise and labour is extremely important to the sector.
Thank you to those of your who responded to our survey on EU workers. Findings which fed into our response included:
- Around 30% of respondents employ over 30% of non-UK EU nationals;
- 22% of respondents employ over 60% non-UK EU nationals. Respondents also noted that they employ additional EU nationals as subcontractors;
- In contrast to the figures for EU nationals, 89% of respondents employ less than 10% of non-UK nationals from outside the EU;
- Over 55% of respondents say that a restriction on access to EU workers would negatively affect their organisation. One respondent noted that posts in their organisation might have otherwise remained unfilled;
- If a salary level of 30,000 were required as minimum for a visa for EU nationals over half of respondents report that over 50% of the jobs in their organization would not meet this criterion, with 46 % saying that this salary requirement would affect over 60% of their job roles.
- Over three quarters of respondents anticipate their workload increasing in the future, exacerbating an existing skills gap, with well over half of respondents believing that the UK does not have enough labour at present to meet this increased need without access to EU nationals.
- Many tourism-based heritage organisations rely on some form of foreign seasonal staff. A recent provisional Historic Houses Association survey showed that 25% of their members indicated that they employed 5 or more EU nationals in the businesses on their properties. For 18% of respondents to our survey, seasonal workers made up 10-30% of their total workforce.
Our response will be on our website shortly- apologies for the delay due to technical problems.