Fuel shortages UK live: Key workers ‘must get petrol priority’

At least one NHS organisation has suffered a staff shortage due to the fuel crisis, doctor advocacy group EveryDoctor said.

A hospital consultant in Bedfordshire told the group, which represents 1,700 doctors: “We had an emergency discussion this morning. Two consultants in our department are out and can’t get to work. Two others on reserve. All four petrol stations within four miles of our hospital are closed with no fuel.”

Yasser Ahmed, who runs a petrol station in West Drayton with his father, said his four-pump station had gone through 30,000 litres of fuel — the amount it would usually sell in a whole week — in just two days.

“That’s completely not normal,” he said.

“Yesterday we didn’t open up, we lost a whole day yesterday, today dad is in, only because we have a lot of regular customers from the local community who are going to work and want to grab their coffee first in the morning.

“That’s the only reason we opened up. We’re not selling anything inside, our shop sales have tanked.

“People are saying on social media that petrol station owners are doing really well and making a lot of money — we’re not. We make our money from shop sales, and they’re gone.”

Shell Energy will take on 255,000 former customers from Green, one of the latest in a raft of small energy supplier to fail over the past month.

Ofgem, the energy watchdog, has been forced to find new providers for more than two million energy customers in the past monnth after the rise in gas prices led to the collapse of seven small suppliers.

There is not expected to be any interruption to energy supply for customers during the handover, Ofgem said.

Halfords recorded a seventeenfold rise in the number of jerry cans sold over the weekend compared with the same period a week earlier.

The containers were the fourth most often searched for item on the motoring and cycling retailers website.

The GMB union has also called for key workers to be granted fuel priority.

The Rachel Harrison, GMB National Officer, said: “Staggering incompetence has left our emergency services without the basics they need to save lives.

“In times of crisis we must prioritise our frontline workers.

“During this completely avoidable crisis, petrol must be prioritised for those key workers who save lives and keep the country moving.”

The Royal College of Nursing has joined unions in calling for key workers to be granted fuel priority.

Patricia Marquis, director for England at the RCN, said: “We already know some nursing staff are warning their employers they may not be able to attend tomorrow to ensure shifts can be safely staffed.

“In light of these supply problems, health and care workers need to be a priority or patient care will be compromised.”

Matt Mathers considers what needs to happen to get the petrol back in the pumps:

Petrol prices have gone up nearly 20 pence since the beginning of the year. The UK average rose from 116.46p on 1 January to 135.87p on Sunday, the highest price in 8 years.

In 2020, prices plunged at the onset of the pandemic. But in 2019 they went up just 7p in the whole year.

In 2018, prices were not even a penny by the end of the year, but that was after a slump as the global oil supply rose. From 1 January to late October, prices rose around 10p before dramatically falling before picking up again in the new year.

Karenza Passmore, 55, from Langley Park in County Durham, said she was unable to drive to work on Monday.

“Yesterday I used 30 [miles] trying to find some diesel but there was no fuel,” she said.

“The nearest garage to me is four miles so it’s a risk now, [chancing] my arm to see if the fuel stations have any in.”

Ms Passmore works is the director of the North East Religious Resources centre, a charity.

“Today I was due to see a colleague in the office – [I’m] going to have to cancel and do it online, hoping things settle and I can fill up soon!

“I don’t want to add to the hype – I am sure that things will settle as they did with loo rolls and food on shelves – but the lack of planning and infrastructure for a clearly foreseeable problem is so disappointing.”

Gary Smith, general secretary of the GMB union, said the government’s visa plan is a short-term solution insufficient to solve the UK’s economic woes.

The proposed 10,000 short term visas for foreign workers will not “address what is a fundamental long-term problem, a government who has failed to plan for the economic needs of the country and for our failure to pay key workers properly”.

Asked if it would be wrong to have 100,000 visas given, he said: “I am not convinced that just issuing loads of visas is going to address the problem. We have got a short-term crisis, we are going to have to come together and find solutions for that.

“But there has to be an honest conversation about a country that’s mired in low pay and insecure work. We are paying for years of driving down pay and conditions.”