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Jobs still in the balance
Page 17
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• The uncertainty clouding the future of the Lowndes Queensway group means that hundreds of transport jobs are still in the balance, with drivers and management uncertain how long their business with the carpets and furnishing group will continue.
Receiver Ernst Young will not disclose how distribution is being arranged for the stores which remain open, and Lowndes Queensway distribution manager Keith Charlton would not comment when contacted by Commercial Motor. But Dawson Rentals, which contract hires about 20 trucks to Queensway subsidiary Carpetland, has had four of its vehicles returned by Carpetland.
A Carpetland driver has told
Commercial Motor that two of the stores which he delivers to in the South London area have recently been closed with only three days' warning: "[just don't know if I'm still going to have a job when I come
in the morning." John Garwood, one of eight drivers employed at Carpetland's Swanley distribution centre, said the centre is now "only supplying 200 to 300 shops instead of 700 to 800".