Administrators have today met with staff of the London taxi manufacturer to explain that, regrettably, there will be 156 redundancies with immediate effect.
Matthew Hammond, joint administrator at PwC, said:
“Regretfully, without financial support to overcome the Group’s operational issues we have had to make staff redundancies. While the steering box recall remains, there is a voluntary suspension on vehicle sales, and we are now concentrating all resources on testing the solution to the steering fault.
“We have retained sufficient numbers of staff across the dealership, head office and production network to address the operational, technical and financial circumstances that the business faces.”
In total 108 staff have been retained or laid off. The 12 that have been laid off have been sent home on partial pay and will be called back into work should vehicle production start up again.
Of the 176 employees based at the group’s head office and manufacturing site in Coventry, 99 have been made redundant and of the 98 employees based at the dealerships in London, Manchester, Leeds, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Coventry, 57 have been made redundant.
The retained staff based in Coventry will continue to focus on finding a solution for the steering fault alongside head office resource to keep the business running. The remaining staff based in the dealerships across the UK will continue to service taxis and will be involved in the steering box refit once a solution has been found.
Union representatives have expressed outrage at PwC’s decision to axe staff. Unite national officer for the automotive industry, Roger Maddison said: “Only last night PWC were telling us there were significant interested parties. Now the administrators are ruthlessly sacking over 150 highly skilled workers at the iconic black cab maker.”
Unite has saif it feels there may be a role for government to step in and save the cab manufacturing company.
