On 1st January, Britain officially exited the EU. A recent BBC article outlines the key things that are changing because of the UK-EU trade agreement that will cause significant differences to how people live, work and travel.

From this, we have created a top-level summary for you, to help understand what some of these key differences are. These include:

Trade

• There will be no taxes on goods (tariffs) or limits on the amount that can be traded (quotas) between the UK and the EU from 1 January
• Some new checks will be introduced at borders, such as safety checks and customs declarations.
• Having a deal in place means that the fear that some goods could become more expensive has been avoided.

Services and Qualifications

• Businesses offering services, such as banking, architecture and accounting, will lose their automatic right of access to EU markets and will face some restrictions.
• There will no longer be automatic recognition of professional qualifications for people such as doctors, chefs and architects.
• Rather than following one set of rules for the whole of the EU, UK businesses will need to comply with the regulations in each individual country.

Travel

• UK nationals will need a visa for stays of longer than 90 days in the EU in a 180-day period.
• The UK government says EHIC will be replaced with a new UK Global Health Insurance Card, but full details have not been released yet.
• UK mobile operators will be able to charge for roaming, so people should check with their mobile phone company before travelling.

Fishing

• Over the next five-and-a-half years, the UK will gradually gain a greater share of the fish from its own waters.

European Court of Justice and other Disputes

• There will be no role in the UK for the European Court of Justice (ECJ), which is the highest court in the EU.
• Disputes that cannot be resolved between the UK and the EU will be referred to as an independent tribunal instead.

Security and Data

• The UK will not be a member of the EU’s law enforcement agency, Europol, but it will have a presence at its headquarters.
• The UK is no longer obliged to comply with EU standards of data protection, but many of the rules about storing and processing data still need to be decided.

Education

• The UK will no longer participate in the Erasmus exchange programme, an EU scheme that helps students study in other countries.
• Students that have already started courses in the EU will continue to receive support for fees.
• A new scheme named after the mathematician Alan Turing will begin in September 2021. The government says it will be similar to Erasmus but will include countries across the world.

What are the things you will need to consider in your organisation or service, because of Brexit and the new UK-EU trade deal?

As part of Brexit, there will be changes regarding immigration that may directly affect your workforce.

• EU Settlement Scheme
• Points-based immigration system

According to Skills for Care, 250,000 jobs in adult social care are held by people with a non-British nationality (7% (113,000 jobs) have an EU nationality and 9% (134,000 jobs) have a non-EU nationality).

According to the EU Settlement Scheme, EU citizens will have until 30th June 2021 to hold, or be in the process of applying for, UK immigration status, to ensure they can continue to live, work and study in the UK. This will apply even if they have lived in the UK for many years or have a permanent residence document. As we have done with our own workforce, we would advise that you share this information with your staff who are EU Citizens to ensure, if they haven’t already applied, then they do so before June 2021.

The UK has now also adopted the points-based immigration system from 1 January 2021. This includes a ‘Skilled Workers’ route which requires that workers meet the 3 non-tradable criteria plus 20 points from the tradeable criteria to achieve 70 points overall. The non-tradable criteria includes; a job at appropriate skills level, an offer of a job by an approved sponsor, speaks the English language. Tradable points might be drawn from a combination of a worker’s salary, a job in a shortage occupation, or possession of a relevant PhD.

At the time of writing, ‘Care Worker’ was not listed as an eligible occupation of the ‘Skilled Workers’ route, therefore Care Workers will not be able to immigrate into the UK to take up these roles. To allow immigration into these roles, ‘Care Worker’ would need to be listed on the shortage occupation list. Roles that are currently listed as occupations for the ‘Skilled Workers’ route are Social Workers, Registered Nurses and Occupational Therapists.

We really hope this is something you find useful and is something you can share with your colleagues.

We want to let you know that we are here to support you, and if you would like any more information on the above or to discuss how else we can support your service, please let us know. To get in touch, email [email protected].

As a specialist, family-run recruitment business, we provide a proactive and consultative approach to recruitment. We help organisations to target issues such as continuity of staffing, reducing spend where you have a high volume of agency usage and supporting those who have specific talent requirements or are in hard to fill locations. We can help with any immediate staffing requirements or longer-term recruitment projects to ultimately save you time and money on agency spend.

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