Nine in 10 businesses say Brexit has affected their ability to recruit and train staff this year, the Confederation of British Industry has said.

The Recruitment and Employment Confederation, the professional body for the recruitment industry, says the public sector, including the NHS and schools, face up to seven more years of skills shortages, based on current demand.

On Thursday the Office for National Statistics said the number of EU citizens coming to the UK for work had fallen to a six-year low.

Matthew Fell, the CBI’s chief UK policy director, said: “These latest statistics highlight the continuing trend of falling net EU migration amid growing shortages across all skills levels in the UK. Ninety-two per cent of businesses cited Brexit as impacting their ability to recruit and train staff in 2018. This means hospitals, schools and housebuilders are already struggling to get the staff they need.

“Banning workers from overseas earning less than £30,000 [as proposed by the government’s migration advisory committee] will only make this worse.”

Research by the REC found that candidate availability was falling month on month, with 75% of employers saying they had little or no capacity to expand.

Its report, Public Sector 2025, forecasts a seven-year shortage even before a post-Brexit migration crackdown. Data collated in the report shows that 10,000 EU staff have left the NHS since the EU referendum.

It said 77% of recruitment specialists thought there would be shortages in health and carer roles in the next five years, and half of school recruiters expected teacher shortages in the same period.

Net migration from the EU to the UK was 74,000 in the year to June 2018, the lowest since 2012.