Remploy have announced today that they are to close their Edinburgh factory
The company said that no Best and Final Offers were submitted for the Croespenmaen or Edinburgh factories.
Following the assessment process, the Remploy Board decided that bids for the Aberdeen and Poole factories do not meet the required criteria to preserve disabled jobs or provide value for money.
The company has therefore confirmed that these four factories will now close and the employees at these four sites are now confirmed as being at risk of redundancy.
Remploy will continue to look for ways in which redundancies can be avoided, which includes trying to identify other jobs in Remploy that might be available.
A period of individual consultation with employees at those four sites lasting up to 30 days will now begin, during which their options and the support available will be discussed
With the shock news today that the Edinburgh Remploy factory in South Gyle is to close, Mark Lazarowicz MP for Edinburgh North and Leith has attacked the betrayal by the UK Government of disabled workers at the factory and called on Remploy, the Department of Work and Pensions, Scottish Government and the City Council to work together to help find the workers alternative employment.
Mark said:-“The news makes me wonder whether the Government was genuinely seeking to find bids to keep factories open or whether it was simply offering false hope.
“One of the stated aims of its welfare changes is to support disabled people into work wherever possible – laudable in principle but it is hard to square that with the way that it has treated Remploy workers.
“Staff will now find themselves out of work at a time when unemployment in Scotland is almost two and a half million. I call upon Remploy, the Department of Work and Pensions, Scottish Government and the City Council to make a concerted effort to help them find alternative employment.”
The factory was reprieved from closure along with other factories in July as the Remploy Board deemed that there was a potentially viable business plan to secure its future. Lazarowicz said:-“Those hopes have now been cruelly dashed.”
Colin Keir, MSP for Edinburgh Western, added.
“This is a kick in the teeth for everyone who has campaigned to save the factory here in Edinburgh. The fight will not stop here and I intend to lobby the UK Government further, in the hope that they may see sense reverse this decision.
“This letter to MSPs reveals an all too familiar lack of respect from Westminster. They shouldn’t write to MSPs – and indeed wouldn’t dare write to MPs – with bad news in such an impersonal manner on such an important issue.”
Founding Editor of The Edinburgh Reporter.
Edinburgh-born multimedia journalist and iPhoneographer.
