Efforts to save the loss-making Remploy factory in Dundee have failed and attention will now be concentrated on finding new jobs for its disabled workers.
Dundee City Council’s cross-party Remploy Working Group has been told that a bid to run the Dunsinane Avenue factory as a social enterprise is not feasible.
The textiles business, which provides supported employment for around 45 disabled people, was earmarked for closure after the Westminster Government announced it was “not commercially viable”.
Lord Provost Bob Duncan said: “The short timescale, the delay between us asking for access to their electronic data room and getting in, and the limited information made available from Remploy has frustrated us at every turn.
“From that partial amount of information we were able to get it became clear that it is impossible to separate the costs of the Dundee, Stirling and Clydebank factories as individual operations.
“There was simply no way of finding out where costs and income actually lie so that intelligent decisions about the future could be made. Our best estimate is that the factory loses £1 million a year and has been doing so for several years.
“There is simply too much risk of committing the council, or any social enterprise it might support, to unknown liabilities.”
One possibility explored by the group was a “phoenix” company, preferably a social enterprise, taking on the contracts and activities of Remploy’s Dundee operation.
Mr Duncan said: “Under the circumstances we did not want to give false hope to the workforce, many of whom are vulnerable, or perhaps worse to create a new company that would only exist for a short time before it became clear it was unsustainable.”
The working group is now exploring alternative sustainable employment for staff who want to stay in the labour market. Dundee City West MSP Joe FitzPatrick said it was hugely disappointing that a viable bid could not be mounted.
Labour’s Jim McGovern MP, Jenny Marra MSP and councillors Kevin Keenan and Richard McCready were unhappy with the nationalists over the outcome.
“We are extremely disappointed for the Dundee Remploy workers. Our thoughts are with those Remploy workers who are now likely to lose their jobs,” they said in a joint statement.
The final decision on the future of Fife’s Remploy factories will be taken in July. Eight parties have expressed an interest in taking the sites in Leven and Cowdenbeath.