Jobs lost in BEL sale
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• Continuing losses of around £3.5 million a year at London Regional Transport Bus Engineering (BEL) has prompted LRT to sell the engineering subsidiary.
LRT told union representatives and staff that a sale of the company to a private buyer with access to wider markets is the only way to make the business viable and preserve jobs.
Around 800 staff at LRT are likely to be affected by the sale and the company says that up to 200 redundancies will be needed to bring the business into profitability, given current output levels.
BEL chairman Bill Fairhall says London Buses is placing less work through BEL, though London Buses accounts for around 95% of BEL's turnover. In the first quarter of 1987/8 BEL lost a total of £1.7 million, and Fairhall says the company must now supply a service that is competitive in terms of quality, delivery and price. "I believe," he says, that under new ownership BEL would be able to expand into new markets at present outside our scope."
In its last financial year BEL made a loss of 210.5 million on a turnover of £23 million. A government subsidy of £7 million reduced that loss to £3.5 million, but the Government has announced that it regards BEL as a commercial activity and has withdrawn the subsidy.
A spokesman for LRT says that the company has "made it known to likely sources" that BEL is up for sale, but no potential purchaser has yet come forward. LRT hopes that the sale can be completed within three or four months but says that BEL should be trading at a viable level once 200 jobs have been cut, so it could conceivably continue within LRT if no purchaser is found.