160 jobs go as Whitbread shuts Swallow offices

About 160 redundancies have been announced with the closure of the Swallow group headquarters in Washington, Tyne and Wear.

Whitbread - which took over the company in November 1999 in a £578m deal - also revealed details of nine Swallow hotels being put up for sale.

The news comes as another big blow to workers in the North-east. Only last May, 430 people lost their jobs when Swallow closed down the Vaux brewery, in Sunderland.

Now, Whitbread has announced that the Swallow headquarters, at Parson House, in Washington, will close by 1 July. Only a handful of the 60 staff will be kept on.

The corporate affairs department at nearby Swallow House will also close, with the loss of 100 jobs.

The first redundancies will come into effect on 3 March.

Whitbread has also revealed details of the nine hotels it is selling because, it says, they are not suitable for conversion to the Marriott chain.

They include the 122-bedroom Imperial in Newcastle, the George at Chollerford, in Northumberland, and Swallow hotels in Glasgow, Gateshead and Stockton-on-Tees. Others listed are the 45-bedroom Eden Arms hotel, at Rushyford in County Durham; the Hilltop hotel, in Carlisle, and the Belstead Park hotel, in Ipswich.

A Whitbread spokeswoman said: "All are good trading hotels. However, they don't meet the strict Marriott standards."

She added: "Until such time as they are sold, all staff and management will be retained, and Whitbread Hotel Company would like to take this opportunity to recognise their loyalty and dedication at this transitional time."

Former Swallow chief executive Peter Catesby has already said he might be interested in buying any hotels Whitbread wants to sell (Caterer, 27 January, page 12).

Whitbread plans to invest £50m in converting to Marriotts the 29 Swallow hotels it is not selling.

by Nigel Green