A WORCESTERSHIRE farm owner has spoken of her frustration at not being able to recruit locally for fruit pickers.

And Ali Capper, the owner of Stocks Farm in Suckley and chairman of national trade body British Apples and Pears, says she has fears the industry will continue to have issues.

Ali said the fruit picking industry had suffered in recent times to recruit people particularly due to Brexit and the pandemic.

"Back in July we advertised for fruit pickers to start at the end of August," she said.

"We put out there was 70 jobs available and we had nine applications.

"But when we went back to those nine for interview, only one was still looking for a job.

"We have now managed to fill those positions through a job recruitment agency, with a mix of Russian, Ukranian, Uzbekistan, Poland, as well as Romanian and Bulgarian people.

"Every year we advertise for, and try and get, local people to come and do these jobs but we have found that has got harder and harder.

"Obviously the experience this year wasn't great."

Ali was speaking after the number of vacancies in the three months to August rose above one million nationally for the first time since records began in 2001, with the Indeed job search website showing vacancies for 1,453 jobs in Worcester, and 4,942 jobs in the county.

Ali said the government needed to do more for their industry including making the seasonal workers pilot - the scheme that allowed temporary migrants to enter the UK for seasonal work - permanent.

"There is no need for us to be here, for decades we have had a scheme that brought seasonal workers," she said.

"We have a million vacancies in the UK - we have a situation now where business, industries are short of labour, very short of labour.

"That is driving up wage costs as it is driving up wages, and it is making it very difficult for businesses like ours.

"It is Brexit and Covid (contributing to the labour shortage).

"Brexit made many feel unwelcome here, putting new rules in, and then you have Covid on top where there are travel restrictions, higher traffic costs, the need for Covid testing - all of those are barriers are things for people wanting to come."

Earlier this week Chancellor Rishi Sunak said: “Our plan for jobs is working – the unemployment rate has fallen for seven months in a row, the number of employees on payrolls is back above pre-pandemic levels and there were fewer potential redundancies notified in August than at any point since the start of last year."

Worcester MP Robin Walker said: "What I'm hearing from a lot of local businesses is not that they don't have jobs on offer, it's the opposite, they can't find enough people to take them.

"We want to make sure vacancy rates remain high so there are opportunities for all the people out there who are out of work."