Brexit: Worries for small businesses with EU staff – BBC News

“EU craftsmen are a vital part of their own economies, helping to plug chronic knowledge gaps across a wide range of sectors, and crowding employment opportunities in an already close-fisted labour market, ” he said.

“From packers, to auto-mechanics, to graphic designers, small employers need to be able to hire the right being, for the right responsibility at the right time.”

‘Cliff edge’

The right of EU and non-EU citizens to come and work in the UK, after Brexit, is still only unclear.

Jonathan Bates is the director of Photon Energy, a solar power company which receives more than a-fifth of its highly-skilled workforce from the EU.

“To have access to those people inhibited would induce us significant difficulties, ” he told the BBC.

If the UK’s existing visa strategy is applicable for EU craftsmen it would be “time consuming, inefficient and expensive” for his business, Mr Bates said.

For its part, the FSB replies the government should guarantee as soon as is practicable the right of existing EU staff to stay here.

And there should be a transition period of at least three years to whatever new immigration rules might affect fresh craftsmen from the EU.

“There can’t be a sudden cliff margin preventing small firms from retrieving the workers they need, ” spoke Mr Cherry.

“This necessitates having sensible transitional arrangements first, followed by the phased implementation of a new in-migration system.”

The FSB’s survey of 1,236 of its members, reported in What Small-scale Conglomerates Miss From Brexit, found that 😛 TAGEND

47% of respondents hired “mid-skilled” staff

72% of respondents had recruited their EU personnel after they had already moved to the UK

95% of the respondents “havent had” event at all of the UK’s current “points-based “system for obtaining work permits for non-EU citizens

56% of respondents were worried about exploiting any new immigration rules after Brexit, and

As numerous as 13% might move their businesses abroad, cut back on their activities in the UK or close altogether.