Around 150 employees of a car dealer based in Wiltshire are at risk of losing their jobs this month.
Workers at the Cazoo in Westbury vehicle preparation centre have been told they can carry on working until Friday, March 17 when the vehicle preparation centre is likely to close.
A member of staff, who wishes to remain anonymous, told this newspaper surveyors were seen at the centre on February 24 measuring the entire site.
“We all in limbo wondering what is going on because we have not been told," they claimed.
"We don’t know whether the surveyors were working for Cazoo or for interested parties.
“The site was tidied up and the factory was made tip top for these people. They came in and measured the entire site.”
The worker said shifts at the centre in Stephenson Road on the Northacre Industrial Estate have been split, meaning there are now fewer employees working there each day as it winds down.
Cazoo confirmed the final day of working is now expected to be March 17 - the day the company's formal 45-day consultation on redundancies is due to close.
Around 3,000 jobs across the UK are being threatened as Cazoo seeks to cut its customer centres from 22 to seven, and its seven vehicle preparation sites to just three.
The industry magazine Car Dealer has reported Arnold Clark has bought Cazoo’s customer centres in Chertsey and Northampton for £10.5 million.
Arnold Clark plans to lease them back to Cazoo, if it wants them, or turn them into its own used car Motorstores.
Two weeks ago the Peter Vardy car dealership was said to have acquired the Cazoo customer centre in Grangemouth and its Livingston vehicle preparation centre.
On January 18, Cazoo told employees in an online ‘all-hands’ team meeting that it planned to shut 15 of its 22 customer handover centres.
The move comes as Cazoo slashed its sales forecasts for 2023 from about 65,000 used cars sold in 2022 to just 40,000 this year. On the same day, Cazoo’s chief executive officer Alex Chesterman stood down.
Cazoo said it would only keep its customer centres in Birmingham, Bristol, Chertsey, Lakeside, Manchester, Northampton and Wembley, and three vehicle preparation centres in Portbury in Bristol, Bedford and at Cold Meece in Staffordshire.
The company is proposing to close four preparation centres at Westbury, Long Bennington, Livingston and Gloucester.
On February 19, the company’s Long Bennington centre near Grantham in Lincolnshire was hit by a fire that destroyed four vehicles in an outside storage area.
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