MP in talks with postal chiefs over closure threat

11:40am Thursday 10th July 2008

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HUNDREDS of Crewe jobs are hanging in the balance this week as talks are held to save the town’s Royal Mail sorting office from closure.

Crewe and Nantwich MP Edward Timpson has arranged a meeting with Royal Mail bosses in an effort to rescue the Weston Road site, which employs 600 people.

The office has been earmarked for closure along with Liverpool’s Copperas Hill site, as part of a major shake-up to streamline and automate the service.

A Royal Mail spokesman confirmed yesterday that talks with union bosses were on-going.

Workers fear that the their jobs will be relocated to Warrington Mr Timpson raised the issue last week in the House of Commons after writing to ministers about the plans.

He said in Parliament: “I am grateful to the minister for Employment Relations and Postal Affairs for his answer to my written question concerning the future of the sorting office in Crewe.

“Although that closure is an operational matter for Royal Mail, he must surely have a view, as the minister for Postal Affairs and a portfolio-holding representative of the sole shareholder in Royal Mail—that is, the Government—on whether the closure of that sorting office is bad for the people of Crewe and bad for those who work there, who have been both long serving and hard working.”

Labour’s minister of state for Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, Patrick McFadden suggested the Conservatives would prefer to avoid making difficult decisions.

Responding to Mr Timpson’s comments, he said: “My understanding is that no announcement has been made on the mail centre at Crewe.

“Royal Mail will of course be engaged in a process of modernisation and automation over the coming years, and it will have to take operational decisions about that.”