hg trim down by IFC before sale
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ITIONAL Freight Corporon is planning to centralise headquarters, and there are ier signs of a big economy ye in time for its sale to vate enterprise, writes AN MILLAR.
lie company announced s week that it is planning to ocate most of its London If in Bedford, and the mter London head offices BRS, Roadline, National -riers, and the Special Traf; Group will go there too. slew home for NFC will be low-rise Merton Centre, a relopment which has lain gely empty since it was npleted in 1976. NFC is :ing 48,800sqft of the )00sqft area, and has told ff that it hopes to save 10,000 as a result of the ve.
'he NFC board and pension d will be the main groups ich will stay in London.
t proposes to have a staff of 1 to 300 in Bedford, and icipates that many of its Won area employees will ve with their jobs between tember this year and the ing of 1981.
;tit the Transport Salaried ffs Association told CM t staff are "dismayed" by announcement which will se considerable upheaval. Lssistant general secretary 't Lyon said: "It is a fair assumption that some of the staff will not move." He also predicted that NEC could have problems recruiting replacements in Bedford.
He said that NFC had told the Association that it was making the move in order to co-ordinate management activities, and to save money. But he wants more information on the concept behind the plan.
NFC chief executive Peter Thompson said this week that the new base will cut the "growing burden" of London overheads, but he stressed that it will not mean an end to the operating companies' separate identities.
And out in the field, NFC confirmed this week that it is carrying out an urgent examination of its Scottish activities to try to reverse the last two years' poor trading results.
It is looking to see what can be done "across company boundaries" to increase efficiency and economise on present practices.
Staff have been told that there is little likelihood of the recession being reversed in the near future, and there are few opportunities for new business in Scotland. There is a general air of belt tightening at NEC, as it prepares to be relaunched as a public company with private capital under the provisions of the Transport Bill.
But BRS dismissed suggestions that a cut of several million pounds is in the pipeline for its 1980/81 budget. "There is absolutely no truth in the rumour," said a spokesman.