Work permit scheme to cut bureaucracy

The UK government is introducing fast-track procedures for granting work permits to encourage more foreign IT workers to move across to the UK.

The permit scheme was announced earlier this week by Education and Employment Secretary David Blunkett to combat the IT skills shortage. The processing time for work permit renewals will be slashed by up to three months - to around one week.

The system joins measures announced by Chancellor Gordon Brown in March's Budget. These include a pilot project involving multinational employers Merrill Lynch and Intel which allows companies to self-certify cross-border employee transfers.

Blunkett admitted there was a need to stamp out "unnecessary bureaucracy".

"In the medium term we must equip our own workforce with the skills needed, but we must also unblock bottlenecks and meet skills shortages," he said.

The Department for Employment and Education also outlined plans for a pilot scheme to allow IT specialists of "outstanding ability" to apply for a work permit and enter the UK without a specific job offer. The moves coincide with a report by the London Skills Forecasting Unit which found that more than two-thirds of companies in the capital are short of IT workers.

Richard Weaver, a director of IT recruitment consultancy The Recruitment Practice, said: "Any trimming of bureaucracy in the process of recruitment is a good thing."

However, he warned that the move could open the floodgates to a large number of low-level computing technicians, with little impact on the current IT skills shortage.

"We need to focus on utilising the key skills of the new people coming into the marketplace and develop our own IT labour market," he added.

First published in Computing