Work permit applications set to hit 120,000 as IT shortage bites

The Department for Education and Employment's Jeremy Turner explained their drive to assist companies looking to fill their technical skills shortage with contractors from abroad…

UKTECH - What sort of numbers are you currently looking at in terms of placements in the UK IT market?

JT: "What I can talk about in general is about the number of work applications we had last year and the envisaged numbers this year. I can say that IT is the biggest area within that, but I couldn't break down exactly the number of IT professionals. Last year we had a look at 70,000 work permit applications. This year we suspect it will be around 120,000. The major areas are in IT and nursing, I would say probably a ballpark figure between those two would be 50% of the work we do, IT is around 25% of that."

UKTECH - Have you seen a rise in IT with the foreign workforce coming in as IR35 has been announced and the UK contractors are leaving?

JT: "In general there has been an increase over the last two years, but I wouldn't say that there is a certain mark where we have a sudden increase."

UKTECH - What are you doing in terms of going out there to pull people in, I know that a Government Minister went out to India fairly recently?

JT: "Really the message we are trying to pass on today is that to apply for a work permit should be a fairly simple process, especially in IT. We have got a number of measures in place to make it as simple as possible and that is why we went to Bangalore. Because I think that there is a misconception that you have to pay someone £1000 just to get someone to fill the form in for you, and really that isn't a reality at all."

UKTECH - What initiatives have you taken to raise the number of applications visa wise?

JT: "As far as visas go, we have links in the Foreign & Commonwealth Office. Obviously to say that there is going to be a rise of the people who come into the UK, there is a bit more of a 'joined-up' government now as they are aware that there is going to be a big rise in applications. Particularly, on our side of things, the way that we have speeded things up is by accepting that certain positions don't need to be advertised and employees don't need to provide proof to us to advertise. We have introduced a system whereby someone's passport can be authorised in Sheffield without having to go to the Home Office, so overall these are the sorts of measure that we have introduced."

UKTECH - So would you say there has been a process of speeding up applications?

JT: "Yes. We have got a target, where we are hoping to meet 80 per cent of applications, where all the information is provided, initially, to make a decision on those within 1 week - that will come in over the next 3-4 months. So there is a big drive for us to make sure the service is speedy and accessible to employers."

UKTECH - What sort of comments would you make about the rise of foreign workers coming in, and the advent of IR35?

JT: "I think we are there to help UK employers, if they feel that they have to bring someone in from overseas to do that job, then that's where we focus our attentions. We make sure that the process of applying for a work permit is as simple as possible."

UKTECH - When you bring people in, because this is a government organisation, do you provide them to the recruitment agencies directly, or do you put them straight into say IBM?

JT: "No. They have to be the employers themselves. So it is the end user that has to apply for the permits. We haven't issued permits to agencies, it's got to be the actual company that has got the job."

UKTECH - So in that respect, you are kind of a recruitment consultant yourself in a manner of speaking.

JT: "All I would say is that we give the UK employer who has got a job to fill, the opportunity to bring someone in from overseas, but other than that we don't make any money out of what we do. It is actually up to the employer to make the application."

UKTECH - Are there any other initiatives you are taking?

"The main one is to simplify the process. It comes back to the 'joined-up' government again, where we have the facility whereby employers can send the employees' passport into us, which means we can actually do that without having to worry about the Home Office getting involved at a later stage. Another thing, that is probably a bit behind the times, but is something that is going to help us if we are to deal with applications in five days is that employers now have the ability to e-mail the applications in instead of sending them by mail. So something that would have taken a few days can now be cut down to minutes."

UKTECH - So are you saying that there is a possibility that you can put through a visa and work permit for someone in five days?

JT: "Yes."

UKTECH - That has to be a fairly new thing?

JT: "Not really, it's just numbers. We would like to do them within a day. We have streamlined the process, there is a lot of information that we used to have to have that we don't need now. So that means we can hit those targets more regularly."

UKTECH - Has the government in this department employed a lot of new staff who deal with the streamlining that you mention?

JT: "Yes, very much so. I have worked in the Overseas Labour Department for a long time, and we had maybe 80-90 people dealing with work permits... we are now up to about 200, and that is purely because we want to offer a better service and also because of the amount of applications coming in. Certainly there is investment to ensure that the service is as good as possible."

UKTECH - You said that in the previous two years you have seen a big jump in people coming in what do you think will happen in the next two years?

JT: "I just think that it will continue. We are on the rise, I think that it will continue at the same rate."

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Richard Powell