Why eastern European truckers are not planning to return to the UK

Driver Require’s CEO, Kieran Smith, was interviewed by The Financial Times and featured in an article "Why eastern European truckers are not planning to return to the UK"

The article discusses the current shortage of HGV drivers and why European drivers aren't rushing back to the UK to work.

Kieran was quoted in the Financial Times ... Kieran Smith, chief executive of Driver Require, a recruitment agency, disagreed. “If we work on the basis of bringing back foreign workers as the solution, then we are grievously misguided,” he said, noting that it was better to focus on attracting back some of the 300,000 Brits who hold HGV licences but have quit.

He pointed to Office for National Statistics data that showed at the start of the pandemic about 40,000 of the 300,000 truck drivers in the UK were from the EU. By the end of March 2021, that figure had halved to around 20,000, but about 5,000 had returned since April.

To read the full article in the FT by Marton Dunai, Agata Majos and Peter Foster

Read and download all the recent reports on the driver shortage from Driver Require