10 days to avoid Christmas disruption, warn retailers
RETAILERS have warned the Government that it has just 10 days to save Christmas from “significant disruption” due to the HGV driver shortage.
The British Retail Consortium (BRC) has warned that disruption to festive preparations will be “inevitable” if progress is not made to solve the shortfall of around 90,000 lorry drivers.
Senior ministers were understood to be meeting to discuss possible solutions to the shortage of HGV drivers.
Andrew Opie, director of food and sustainability at the BRC, said: “HGV drivers are the glue which hold our supply chains together. Without them, we are unable to move goods from farms to warehouses to shops.
“Currently, the UK faces a shortfall of around 90,000 HGV drivers and it is consumers who ultimately suffer the consequences. Unless a solution can be found in the next 10 days, it is inevitable that we will see significant disruption in the run-up to Christmas.”
At a meeting a week ago, BP reportedly told the Government that the company was struggling to get fuel to its forecourts. Its head of UK retail, Hanna Hofer, described the situation as “bad, very bad”, according to a report by ITV News.
BP had “two-thirds of normal forecourt stock levels required for smooth operations”, she said, adding that the level is “declining rapidly”.
The AA has said that most of the UK’s forecourts are working as they should amid worries over supply of petrol at some sites.
“There is no shortage of fuel and thousands of forecourts are operating normally, with just a few suffering temporary supply chain problems,” said AA president Edmund King.
“Fridays and the weekend always tend to be busier on forecourts as drivers either combine filling up with shopping runs, prepare for weekend trips or refuel for the start of the new working week. Drivers should not fill up outside their normal routines because, even if the occasional petrol station is temporarily closed, others just down the road will be open.”
On Thursday, Rod McKenzie of the Road Haulage Association trade body said the Government had allowed the driver shortage to get “gradually worse” in recent months.
“We have got a shortage of 100,000 (drivers),” he told BBC’s Newsnight. “When you think that everything we get in Britain comes on the back of a lorry, whether it’s fuel or food or clothes or whatever it is, at some point, if there are no drivers to drive those trucks, the trucks aren’t moving and we’re not getting our stuff.”
He added: “I don’t think we are talking about absolutely no fuel or food or anything like that, people shouldn’t panic buy food or fuel or anything else, that’s not what this is about. This is about stock outs, it’s about shortages, it’s about a normal supply chain being disrupted.”