Hospitality recruiters may face even greater problems finding suitable chefs when government plans to tighten up the working visa system come to fruition next year.

The British Hospitality Association (BHA) and sector skills council — People 1st — have written a letter to Prime Minister Gordon Brown to warn that the UK faces a worsening skills crisis in a sector already struggling to recruit chefs and kitchen staff.

The problems will worsen in the run-up to the 2012 Olympics and if government plans for a stricter points system for foreign chefs are brought in, the BHA said.

Bob Cotton, chief executive of the BHA, told Recruiter: "One of our concerns is that the points system is qualification-heavy and we are a crafts-based industry. It will rely on formal qualifications, and people who are coming from South Asia, for example, are not necessariliy going to have those."

Matt Barrett, managing director for SVB, said the long-standing shortage of chefs has worsened, partly because the smoking ban has meant pubs have upped the quality of their food. "I can't see the problem getting better without some kind of national investment in the training of chefs," he told Recruiter.

Philip Hubson, senior consultant for Catering Services International, added: "We have had quite a few people from South Africa on a one or two-year working visa. When they have applied for an extension it's been low on the priority list, even though the UK is in real need of skilled chefs."