South Holland growers want to cut 'green tape' and boost district's £250m horticulture sector

Struggling South Holland growers want the Government to cut trade barriers to boost our £250 million horticulture sector.

Employers in the industry say new ‘green tape’ is adding to problems they are facing with shortages of staff and transport.

From June 1 new fees were added to import inspections - adding to the post-Brexit certificates and inspections required from January.

Henry Bingham, of Crossroads Nurseries in Quadring, said this means new fees of about £270 an order for goods such as plants and trees.

He said: “There’s a combination of everything at the moment - a lack of staff, lack of transport and we now have to pay more to import things.

“The only thing that has changed is that we have left the EU. The product has not changed but now we have got to pay £270.

“Basically the people this is going to affect are small businesses rather than the large ones who can pool things together - it’s easier to offset extra charges across more and more product.”

Latest figures on the horticulture industry suggest that South Holland’s flower and plant sales are worth £150 million a year - while field vegetables also contribute a further £100 million.

The Horticultural Trades Association has begun a campaign to call for a UK-EU deal to ditch the red tape, which it says could turn the industry into a post-Brexit success story.

Mr Bingham said: “The Government very rarely listen to horticulture and agriculture but the more voices that are talking the better.

“Horticulture and agriculture are seen as low down jobs - they are more interested in the financial markets and things like that.”

Mr Bingham also hit back at critics who say the sector’s labour shortage should be solved with a home grown workforce.

He said: There’s a massive lack of staff in South Holland. “People are busing them in from out of the area - it’s just a mess.

“People say there are plenty of English people to do the work. There’s not, that’s a lie.

People believe that horticulture and agriculture is below them - or anything that involves physical or manual labour.”

He also argues that the sector offers better paid work than it’s given credit for - with general labourers earning £9-10 an hour.

Mr Bingham added: “Believe me, there’s money in manual labour.

“People won’t do it. They claim we had cheap foreign labour - foreign labour was never cheap. But they always turned up and always worked - until now.”

Help us achieve ‘huge ambitions’

Current rules are causing prices of house plants to rise 8% - and leading to a shortage of products such as cacti - according to the Horticultural Trades Association.

The HTA says EU countries are the single biggest trading partners for our businesses - and that customer demand ensures the need for imports of plants and plant material.

It has launched a ‘Let Britain Grow’ campaign after finding that 78% of growers have suffered a ‘negative impact’ from the rules - and says customers could pay over a pound more for a £9.99 plant to cover admin costs.

James Barnes, chairman of the Horticultural Trades Association, said: “This is the single biggest non-tariff barrier to trade in the history of our industry.

“We all support having a robust biosecurity regime, but the UK Government needs to get a better balance on the regulations and restrictions, which are limiting responsible trade. The spiralling staff hours to administer the paper mountain, inspection fees, phytosanitary certificates and cost increases amounts to £25m-£30m.

“We are speaking with the Government, but they are not reacting. We need to trade more freely if we are to open up our industry to the economic powerhouse it can be and work on a plant health agreement that instils recognition and trust and remove the green tape.

“Let Britain Grow is a chance for the government to get behind an industry that has huge ambitions for growth. We have a real opportunity of developing a post-Brexit opportunity for increased trade in our sector and for the UK internationally.”

It says that last year plants even fell under the same ‘controlled goods’ category as weapons of mass destruction, torture equipment, explosives and arms - although this classification has now been removed.