London could face worker shortages due to Brexit visa restrictions

London could suffer from the tougher post-Brexit immigration rules with the City left facing a shortage of workers, said business lobby London First.

The restrictions are set to prioritise highly-skilled immigration but this could harm many industries that need a more diverse range of skill sets.

According to Jasmine Whitbread, London First' boss, who is also a non-executive director at Standard Chartered: “Having diverse people from around the world does make London outperform, so we do need to be able to attract those people.”

Whitbread said that the one thing businesses in all sectors agree that needs to be secured is continued access to global talent because “you can’t have a great global competitive city without global competitive people”.

One of the concerns in business is the regulation of the pay grade for migrants that will be introduced after Brexit. Although the £30,000 threshold for certain types of visa has not yet been decided.

In an interview with Bloomberg Television, Whitbread said: “The problem with that is half of all Londoners actually earn less than 30,000 pounds, and a third of all Londoners are born outside the UK.”

“There’s many skilled people out there who aren’t earning 30,000. Nurses, radiographers, chefs -- we’ve got a shortage of chefs across London -- carers, construction workers. That’s the key sticking point that we’re still in debate on with the government.”