EXCLUSIVE

by Alan Watkinsawatkins@thekmgroup.co.uk

Royal Mail is planning to create a new super sorting centre in Medway – throwing hundreds of jobs across Kent at risk.

It has applied to the council to build a centralised county postal hub on the derelict site of a former Tesco distribution warehouse in Strood.

If given the go-ahead, it would lead to the closure of four Kent sorting offices described as “outdated”.

Royal Mail has not revealed how many of more than 1,200 sorting staff – 459 at Tonbridge, 294 at Maidstone, 249 at Canterbury and 212 at Dartford – would lose their jobs, but said it “hopes to avoid” redundancies.

No staffing numbers have yet been given for the new centre, earmarked for between Knight Road and Norman Close.

But Jane Chitty, the councillor responsible for strategic planning in Medway, welcomed the application and the possibility that it might bring jobs to the Towns.

A Royal Mail spokesman said it is “reviewing its processing and delivery operations in Kent and has identified a site for a proposed purpose-built new mail centre.

“Under current proposals, it is envisaged this proposed new site would handle all mail currently processed in Canterbury, Maidstone, Dartford and Tonbridge mail centres.

“These are all over 25-years-old and do not have space for the latest mail sorting machinery in which Royal Mail is investing to modernise its business.”

He added: “At present, this is our preferred location due to its easy access to transport links like the motorway and train stations for our operations and the majority of our people in Kent.”

BOC Gases is moving its own warehouse to enable Royal Mail’s trucks road access to the M2. It’s new distribution centre will open in Norman Close in November.

If the proposals get the go-ahead in mid-November, the new Strood mail centre should be ready in spring 2012.

Work would be gradually transferred from the existing sites. But before building work can begin, a three-month hunt would have to take place to catch and move a large number of common lizards and slow worms at the site.