BOMBARDIER SAYS FUTURE OF DERBY SITE IS SECURE
Published at 12:57 on Monday 13th February 2012
Tags: Bombardier, Derby, Litchurch Lane, Southern, Crossrail, Works
One of the recently introduced Class 378 units for London Overground is pictured under construction at Derby. Brian Morrison
Following a series of meetings with employees, Bombardier Transportation has confirmed that the short to medium term future for its Derby site is secure.
With the awarding of the Thameslink contract to Siemens, the future for Litchurch Lane in Derby looked bleak, especially after the announcement last year that the workforce was to be reduced by over 1,000 workers. However, the recent awarding of the £188 million contract for 130 new carriages, by Southern, has brought renewed optimism that the Derby site could be secured.
This was confirmed by the company during a series of meetings held on 9th February, when employees were told that design, engineers and manufacturing would be retained at the present time. Additional work has been brought in, with the engineering teams at Derby looking at international contracts, such as double-deck trains for Switzerland and monorail systems for Sao Paulo.
With the Southern contract due for delivery by the end of 2013, Bombardier are actively looking ahead and confirmed to Railway Herald that the company will be bidding for the Crossrail rolling stock contract. Of the 1,400 planned redundancies announced last year, 229 have been saved by the Southern and international contracts, meaning that Derby still employs almost 1,600 people.
The news of the brighter future was cauiously welcomed by the industry, Derby and Derbyshire Rail Forum commenting that while "we welcome this news, it is important that the company can bid for additional work to ensure that it has a future well beyond 2014. So we call upon the Department for Transport to look with renewed vigour at opportunities to provide much needed new rolling stock for Britain’s railways between now and placing the order for a new Crossrail fleet. And in particular we hope that the well-developed proposal to add electric vehicles to the Voyager fleet can be swiftly progressed."
