Government resumes ‘war room’ calls with grocers over driver shortages

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The Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) this morning held the first Food Resilience Industry Forum call since April in response to growing concerns in Whitehall over the effects of a national shortage of HGV drivers.

The government originally set up the forum as a daily call between Defra, representatives of the major supermarkets and other key stakeholders involved in the ‘feed the nation’ response to the coronavirus crisis last spring.

As the crisis subsided, the calls went to twice weekly and then once weekly events, before Defra made the decision to wind down what had come to be known as the industry’s Covid ‘war room’ in April this year, in favour of a once a quarter meeting.

However, Retail Week understands from a number of sources that Defra was forced to reconvene the forum today amid growing concern in government about the effect the ongoing HGV driver shortage will have on food availability on supermarket shelves as well as in publicly funded institutions such as schools.

At the time of publication, Defra had not responded to a request for comment.

Federation of Wholesale Distributors (FWD) chief executive James Bielby said: “We had a very constructive meeting this morning with Defra officials who are clearly switched on to the potential threat to food supply if this distribution crisis isn’t addressed immediately. We will be working with Defra to demonstrate to other government departments that while this is a long-term problem, it desperately requires a short-term solution.”

As has been reported by Retail Week and elsewhere, a combination of Brexit and Covid-19 has left the sector with a shortage of 100,000 drivers.

On June 23, a letter from stakeholders including the Road Haulage Association (RHA) said intervention from the government was now the only way to avert “critical supply chains failing at an unprecedented and unimaginable level”.

The letter, signed by other major stakeholders including the Food and Drink Federation and the FWD, called on the government to offer temporary worker visas for HGV drivers; for the occupation to be added to the Home Office Shortage Occupation List; the establishment of a task force; and for the re-establishment of the forum.

“Supermarkets are already reporting that they are not receiving their expected food stocks and, as a result, there is considerable wastage,” said RHA chief executive Richard Burnett.

It is not only food retailers struggling due to the shortage of drivers, with food at some schools and local authorities also being affected.

It was reported by The Observer at the weekend that Sheffield city council wrote to schools last week warning that they may have to rely on emergency standby ingredients such as fish fingers and dried pasta to feed their pupils if the driver shortage continued.