Jobs hunt taskforce plan

A Rover-style taskforce could be set up to help find employment for more than 200 workers at doomed Black Country car parts firm Clancey.

Stourbridge MP Lynda Waltho said she would push the scheme with ministers after administrators told staff they would lose their jobs within three months.

She said job centre staff developed a system for finding alternative areas of employment for highly-skilled manufacturing workers, after more than 6,000 jobs were lost in the £1.4bn collapse of car giants MG Rover last year.

"I left a message today with the senior staff at the Job Centre, because I think they need to establish a similar operation to the one used with former Rover workers," she said.

"There are so many skills and so much experience among the workforce at Clancey's. It is going to be really important to build on that and make sure that staff are found work that makes use of these skills."

Mrs Waltho said of the announcement that Clancey administrators, KPMG, had not found a buyer for the Cradley plant, Saltbrook Road, Lye,: "Apart from the direct impact of losing their jobs, this will affect an awful lot of families.

"There are all sorts of possibilities and I am as confident as I can be that the local job service will use their experience in handling Rover workers to best effect.

"I think they learned a lot from the Rover collapse in terms of getting dedicated teams working on it and they picked up a lot of expertise in doing that.

"It may need a special task force and that is what I will be pushing for."

She said she would contact ministers to discuss potential programmes.

The Express & Star exclusively revealed news of the closure. Administrators say the amount of cash needed to modernise put off buyers.

G Clancey was founded in West Bromwich in 1923, opening up at Belle Vale in the 1940s before moving to Saltbrook Road in 1963.

By Richard Williams

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