Large scale redundancies

Skills for Care and Rochdale council - "Boots distribution centre" redundancy project

In late September 2008 Skills for Care in the North West were made aware that 2 Boots distribution centres were to close in the Rochdale area with the potential loss of 550 jobs.

Contact was made with the local Care Ambassador Scheme co-ordinator and the Boots HR leads at the centres in Rochdale and Heywood. Initially it was proposed that we hold a couple of awareness raising sessions for any of the at-risk employees who might be considering a career change and wanted some information about social care.

The management team at Boots, as responsible employers were already being proactive to support the staff, so they welcomed our involvement. They did, however, say that whilst they would organise and administer the sessions anyone wanting to attend would have to do so in their own time to ensure that only those with a real interest put their names forward. The processes and lessons learnt from the work in the North West are important and transferable across the country.

Large_Scale_Redundancies (pdf)