A HUGE staffing crisis is hitting curry house owners in York.

Hardline immigration rules are forcing staff - many of them kitchen workers in York's Bangladeshi restaurants - to leave the country.

Applications to extend special 12 month visas issued to them last year have been met with blanket refusals.

The result is that some restaurant owners in York have lost as many as five staff at once as they have been forced to return to their home country. Some are bracing themselves for stinging staff losses over the next month.

Last year rules were relaxed to allow Bangladeshi workers a 12-month visa to support the hospitality and food manufacturing industries in the UK under what was called the Sector Based Scheme.

But as those visas are now running out, there is no indication that the scheme will be revived, and visa holders have been told by the Home Office that there will be no extensions.

"This is the biggest crisis we have had to face since we started the Bengal Brasserie in Goodramgate in 1996," said joint owner Iqbal Chowdhury.

"Over the next month the year-long visas of four of our kitchen porters runs out and they have been told that they cannot reapply.

"Where we should have 24 staff covering each of our three restaurants in York, Poppleton and Market Weighton, now there will be 20, and it is going to have a tremendous effect because recruiting from the local population is notoriously difficult.

"No one wants to wash pots and pans over the kind of unsocial hours that we work."

As his staff doubled up on roles, the work of the kitchen was bound to slow down and the mood of his workers was in danger of getting worse, he said. "What we need is for three-year permits to be granted, which we would be willing to guarantee with a bond. The £12,000 per year salary we offer affords them a much better life than they would have in Bangladesh."

Mr Chowdhury said: "We have constantly grown over the past nine years, but now all further plans for expansion are on hold."

Kaliqu Zaman, owner of the Jaipur Spice, in Haxby Road, York, with a branch in Easingwold, also called for visas to be extended to three years. Five of his kitchen staff were forced to go back to Bangladesh when their 12-month visas ran out and one more is preparing to leave.

"It's a tragedy not just for us, but for them too. One of those who left worked his way up from washing dishes to becoming a remarkably good second chef. He acquired great skills and will be difficult to replace.

"We have recruited more staff at greater wages to attract people, which will reflect on our bottom line. Even if we did apply for work permits they tend to get no further than the British clearance officer in Dacca, Bangladesh, who won't endorse them."

A Home Office spokesperson said: "Under the existing sector based scheme the quota is 15,000 permits - 9,000 for the hospitality sector and 6,000 for the food processing sector.

"Not more than 20 per cent of the quota will be given to any single nationality.

"In our five-year plan we have made it clear that in the light of additional labour now available from the new EU countries that we will phase out over time our current quota-based scheme, but only after a review with the sector concerned. We recognise that certain parts of the hospitality sector do argue that they face particular challenges in recruiting workers with the skills that they require, but these difficulties are not necessarily ones that are best addressed through a scheme for low skilled workers."

Updated: 10:33 Friday, April 01, 2005