York fears over plumbing centre jobs

7:47am Wednesday 19th November 2008

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UNCERTAINTY surrounds the future of hundreds of plumbing and building supply jobs in York and North and East Yorkshire today, after Wolseley announced plans to cut 2,000 jobs and close more than 200 branches.

The firm trades under several names including Plumb Center, Build Centre and Drain Centre, which have branches in towns and cities across the region.

The plumbing and heating merchants Plumb Center has outlets in James Street, York, and also Clifton Moor, Pickering, Malton, Selby and Goole, and there is also a Drain Centre and a Build Centre in James Street, and another Build Centre in Malton. Calls by The Press to local centres were referred to head office, where a spokeswoman said the firm had not yet announced which branches would be affected by the closures and job losses.

She said managers would be talking to staff as part of a consultation process over coming weeks.

The job cuts will be phased over the next few months and are expected to reduce annual costs at the company by £80 million.

The spokeswoman said its base at Ripon, where hundreds of people are employed, was not included in the announcement, but all aspects of the business remained under review.

Wolseley, which operates more than 1,900 branches in the UK and Ireland, said the job cuts reflected its expectations of a further decline in trading. The pressure on Wolseley to reduce overheads was highlighted by first quarter figures showing group trading profits down 30 per cent due to lower profitability at its UK and American operations.

Wolseley said revenues in the UK and Ireland division decreased by about ten per cent with trading profits down by about 65 per cent in the three months to October 31.

The company said its building materials brands such as Build Center and Brooks in Ireland continued to be affected by the rapid deterioration in new residential construction.

The company’s consumer-focused business Bathstore also reported a significant deterioration in revenues in the first quarter.

However, Wolseley said Plumb Center continued to show resilience, with more than two-thirds of revenues coming from the residential repair and maintenance market.

The company said: “Our objective remains to ensure the appropriate sizing of the cost base in line with the expected market environment.”

The job losses are just the latest to be announced in recent days, after a raft of UK companies including BT, JCB, truckmaker Leyland, Virgin Media, Yell and GlaxoSmithKline all announced plans to shed labour, and some experts are now predicting that unemployment will go over three million.