Lookers is making some staff redundant as it cuts its management teams at three Volkswagen dealerships in the north-east. 

Peter Jones, the operations director responsible for the outlets, said: “This is not part of a programme we’re rolling out across the group.”

Each general manager, service manager and sales manager role is being made redundant at VW dealerships in Darlington, Northallerton and Middlesborough. 

They will be replaced by one of each overseeing all three sites, supported by a lower-paid sales controller and service controller at each dealership.

Jones said a similar procedure had worked at Mercedes-Benz dealerships where a new car or used car manager was responsible for two or three sites.

“The change at the three VW sites in the north-east works because they are all part of the same market area,” he said.
“We would not do it at our big VW sites in Preston and Blackpool where we need to have high quality managers at each one.”

Jones said Lookers was not planning a series of redundancies across the group. “We don’t want to get rid of our entrepreneurs at a time like this, and we’ll need to have them when the market picks up.”

Lookers recently made around 60 redundancies on closing its Skoda and Chevrolet dealership in Maidstone and up to 26 jobs were lost after its closure of Land Rover in Bury St Edmunds. 

According to sources a number of staff across the group are still going through a consultation period.