Yahoo News Tesco offers lorry drivers £1,000 joining bonus amid NHS Covid app chaos
Tesco lorry drivers are being offered a £1,000 joining bonus as the supermarket giant battles a shortage of drivers due to Covid.
The offer is being made to candidates who join before September 30.
Other companies are understood to be making similar offers, BBC News reported.
It comes amid a significant shortage of HGV drivers, in part due to workers having to self-isolate after being “pinged” by the NHS Covid app.
The Road Haulage Association (RHA) estimates there is a shortage of 100,000 drivers across the UK.
They also said 30,000 HGV driving tests did not take place during 2020 because of the effects of the pandemic.
The RHA estimates there is a “historic” shortage in drivers because of changes to rules following Brexit, as well as the impact of the NHS Covid app.
Pingedemic has led to empty shelves across a number of UK supermarkets while oil firm BP said it had to temporarily close some of its sites due to shortages in unleaded petrol and diesel.
Rod McKenzie, managing director of the RHA, said wages were being driven up in an “increasingly competitive” market for HGV drivers.
He said the government needs to “speed up” driving tests as it currently takes about six months to fully train a HGV driver.
“We are not seeing any sign of it getting better in the short term,” he added.
The RHA has also called on the government to put HGV drivers on the Home Office Shortage Occupation List.
Ministers recently granted a temporary extension of lorry drivers’ working hours and told the sector they would consult over “the delegation of off-road manoeuvres” as part of the HGV test.
It added the Department for Transport would look at issuing provisional licences to drive rigid and articulated lorries.
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