Sacha Lord, Night Time Economy Adviser for Greater Manchester, comments on the continued problems surrounding the Track and Trace app for hospitality;
“Every day, hospitality venues across Greater Manchester are being forced to close due to staff being asked to isolate, despite those same employees testing negative continuously across the ten day quarantine period. From a business and economic perspective, we cannot wait until the 16 August to resolve these issues and I urge the Government to introduce wide scale daily testing or a test-to-release system.
I am also concerned the test and trace system is camouflaging the general shortage of staff across the sector. In addition to the thousands who have moved to other roles outside of the industry, a huge percentage of hospitality staff were EU nationals who can no longer work within the UK due to Brexit regulations.
Once the veil falls on the test and trace system, it will become clear that the introduction of salary-threshold visas post Brexit have resulted in severe recruitment issues and a shambolic own goal for the UK.”
