Bar and restaurant workers will be able to get jobs without a CV under new plans to beat a hospitality staffing crisis.
The number of hospitality vacancies has risen by almost 100,000 since the start of the pandemic in 2020.
A new programme, Westminster Works, is meant to fill at least 2,200 empty roles in London.
If it works, it could be rolled out across the UK.
The idea is to scrap the need for CVs in favour of on-the-job trials and training.
This expands the pool of people able to apply for hospitality and leisure jobs.
The scheme will focus on hiring people without jobs, such as early retirees, parents, carers, people with learning difficulties and ex-offenders.
More than 100 hospitality and leisure firms are taking part, to fill vacancies at hotels, restaurants, bars, cafes, clubs, casinos and other venues across Westminster by March 2024.
Jobseekers can register with the scheme using the website www.westminster.works.
Westminster is home to 3,700 restaurants, bars and cafes and a further 4,000 leisure businesses supporting 120,000 jobs in the city.
Training programmes will be paid for by £2million donated from the London Mayor, Sadiq Khan.
Khan said: “This timely scheme will help employers overcome staff shortages, find thousands of job opportunities, while at the same time setting the high standard for workers rights. It’s good for business, good for workers, and good for Westminster.”
Any workplace that signs up to the new scheme has to pay staff at least the London Living Wage.
They will also have to make promises on work-life balance, career progression and diversity and inclusion.
UK Hospitality chief executive Kate Nichols said: "The number of job vacancies in the hospitality sector has reached record highs and this scheme could not come soon enough for those dedicated and hard-working businesses that have been poleaxed by Covid, both during the restrictions caused by the pandemic and the after-effects as they try to recover.
“Workers will be afforded better working and employment conditions under this scheme, which is increasingly important in the current cost of living crisis.”
But the hospitality sector is not the only one suffering a staffing crisis.
In August The Mirror reported hospital nurses have been told to double up as cleaners as the NHS staffing problem deepened.
Specialist nurses at Luton and Dunstable University Hospital were put on notice to help clean wards and dirty utility rooms.
Staff were told in a letter that they could be required to act as cleaners for a whole shift.
Their trust said it had made the request reluctantly during “some of the most challenging circumstances we have ever faced”.
Unison’s deputy head of health Helga Pile said: “Many health workers are throwing in the towel. They feel guilty that the pressures on them mean patients are no longer being cared for properly."
