Barber forced to pay £10,000 to agency to keep business alive

Wednesday 20 May 2015

A barber forced to pay more than £10,000 in agency fees over the last two years to keep a member of staff without five-years’ residency says that the system is strangling small businesses.

Tony Fitzpatrick runs Jason’s, the oldest barbers in Jersey, but he says its impossible to find qualified staff because Highlands College don’t train barbers, and the Population Office won’t give him a licence for a newcomer.

He says that there are at least four qualified barbers already here working in hotels because they don’t have five years’ residency, but that he can only employ one through an agency.

That led to him recruiting a member of staff himself, but having to go through an employment agency to employ her, which has cost him more than £10,000 over the last two years – money that he says he could have given to his employee, instead of paying to the agency who hold the employee licence which he needs.

Politicians have refused to help him – he says they told him that five-year licences were “only for finance companies” – and Mr Fitzpatrick says that the situation is ridiculous.

He said: "We have got a successful business, why would they want to destroy it? They are holding us back.

"I talk to people about what's happening here, and they just can't believe it. They are trying to get me to run a business with one hand tied behind my back."