On Sun, 26 Sep 2004 11:56:53 +0100, ":::Jerry::::"
wrote:


"Andy Hall" wrote in message
.. .
On Sun, 26 Sep 2004 10:04:28 +0100, ":::Jerry::::"
wrote:

snip
At the end of the day it doesn't really matter because the impact of
the loss of 500 jobs in Yeovil is not going to have any long term
effect on SF's business anyway, either financially or by customer
retention. One or two people might not buy from them for a while,
but that's it.

In that scenario I see no reason at all why they would need to go
through an elaborate charade of blaming it on the local authority.
All that that achieves is to raise the profile of the whole issue and
make people wonder. Plus it costs money to have plans put together,
go through all the bureaucracy etc. It's much easier to simply
announce that they are closing one facility and opening another. The
public interest in that would have lasted 10 minutes,.
If the motivation was to move anyway, the latter would have been the
obvious course of action.


The point is, it costs a great deal of money to move buildings let alone to
a different part of the country (and it's not done at the drop of the hat
either), what I'm saying is that I suspect SF knew that they would not get
their planning application though but still applied in the hope that the
loss of 500 local jobs would twist the arms of the planners and that *if* it
had gone through it would have allowed SF to save a considerable amount of
money IYSWIM.

Interesting idea. Although they did attempt two applications, which
would be seem to me to be a lot to do to achieve that.

It would also make life easier when dishing out redundancy
notices, they were able to just say 'Not our fault, sorry'.

I'm not sure that most companies are hugely bothered about that.


For little real cost they have been shown as a company who were, at least on
the surface, probably wanting to employ more local staff (directly or
indirectly), are a successful company who are expanding and not at fault
when chucking making over 500 people redundant - all very much the win, win,
win situation...

It seems like a lot to do just to achieve that.

There seem to be a number of planning applications in the works for
various things including an office extension (although of course that
could be let out), so it isn't as though the area is being vacated.



Perhaps I'm just a cynical old sod ?! :~)


I guess we'll find out over the coming months.


..andy

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