Food firm Staples given green light for more EU student labour with caravan plans Staples of Wrangle who are expanding to take on more foreign workers. Staples of Wrangle who are expanding to take on more foreign workers. Published on the 20 November 2014 06:30 Print this 0 comments Be the first to comment The green light has been given to plans to expand a food producer’s on site accomodation so it can take on more EU student labour. Staples Vegetables, at Marsh Farm, on Sea Lane, Wrangle, was given approval by Boston Borough Council’s planning committee last Tuesday to make its 63 on site caravans and amenity buildings permanent, while also adding another 52 caravans. The company currently employs up to 378 students and this could now rise to 650 at peak points with the extra ‘sourced directly and predominantly from Romanian and Bulgarian colleges and universities’ according to the planning statement given to the council. The students are hired through the Harvesting Opportunities Permit Scheme (HOPS). Managing director Vernon Read said “We are pleased that the application has been supported and passed by the council. “We use HOPS to recruit employees. HOPS recruit from universities and colleges throughout Europe , including the UK. HOPS supply workers to many farms across the UK .” The company planning statement says it suffers an ‘inability to recruit from the indigenous population’ but adds Lincolnshire ‘still thrives because foreign students continue to visit the area to work’. It wants to cut the amount of agency staff it employs, currently about 240 workers, costing £3.5 million a year. The statement accuses agency staff of being ‘often unreliable and unmotivated’ and says Staples have to regularly retrain and induct new personnel. The students, however, are employed directly by Staples. Mr Read added: “We feel that employing people directly is a better system that relying on agency workers, it allows us to give better training and get much more continuity in the workforce.” The statement suggests that having extra students will help stop the need for agency staff to take up accomodation in Boston. On agency staff it stated: “This also creates sustainability issues and they (agency staff) occupy homes at the cheaper end of the housing scale thereby depriving the indigenous population of affordable dwellings. “Housing a transient foreign population in settled indigenous communities also causes proven community cohesion issues.” The company said employees will be ‘young and fit’ and will have little or no impact on healthcare facilities. Councillors voted by a majority to approve the application as recommended by its planning officers. Coun Paul Gleeson objected to the application as he believed the company should use a different method of accommodating students, such as a hoste
Posted on: Thu, 20 Nov 2014 09:22:06 +0000
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