Up to 1,500 jobs could be lost
in Coventry because of the Rover sale, but experts are still
optimistic about the area’s prospects.
Carl Pearson, head of Coventry
Centre For Investment, said 94 firms in the city would be affected
because they did business with the car giant.
But fears that a lot of
Coventry residents worked in the Longbridge plant have so far proved
unfounded.
It is expected that around 750
people living in Coventry will lose their jobs, with another 750
affected in the supply trade.
Mr Pearson said the facts
about the situation were still emerging and the situation was changing
constantly.
Today it was reported that
former Rover chief executive John Towers was putting a bid to rival
the Alchemy offer and was planning to keep Longbridge in
mass-production.
He told city councillors that
the Coventry area could become a centre of excellence for design work
in the motor industry if Ford take over Rover’s Gaydon design centre
and the plans to expand Jaguar’s Whitley plant is given the
go-ahead.
He said:
“We face problems but they
are against a background of general economic prosperity.
“I wouldn’t expect
everyone from Rover to end up on the dole.
“You have to continue to
invest in creating jobs for the future in the modern economy. You
cannot rely upon past glories.”
Council leader Cllr John
Fletcher said the ramifications of the Longbridge sale were being felt
all over the country and not just in the West Midlands.
But he added that Coventry was
well-placed to deal with any problems that came its way.
He said:
“The Coventry Business
Park is an enormous success. There area now more jobs on that
business park than there were in the latter days of Standard, and
some of them are in the engineering sector.”
Cllr Fletcher praised the
Government’s taskforce for its methodical approach to the problem
caused by the planned sale of Rover.
But
he warned that the £127 million pledged so far would not be enough to
cope with the predicted redundancies. Given an average cost of around
£8,000 to create a new job £300 million would be needed.