AA to close national training centre near Melton and shed 100 jobs

Staff were called to a meeting this week when bosses also revealed that the business was to axe 100 jobs in management, administration and support roles across the country.

The training centre, which is based at Six Hills, is the company’s main UK site for technical training and inductions and boasts 13 classrooms and nine workshops. It specialises in honing the skills of roadside technicians and patrols.

GMB, the union for AA patrol staff, blasted the decision to close the centre and make so many redundancies.

Regional officer Paul Grafton said: “Every single manager in the AA including those from roadside and the call centres were called to a meeting to hear the announcement of the restructuring and the closure of the national training centre in Melton Mowbray.

“The closure of this national training centre will reduce structured training and in the end, in our view, impact on quality of service delivered by the patrol force.

“GMB believes that the reduction in the numbers of managers and administration staff will also impact on the quality of the service and leave problems that should be dealt with unresolved.

“All these cuts are a direct result of the unsustainable levels of debt left by the previous private equity owners.”

In their statement issued to staff, the AA said: “We are today announcing a series of proposals involving restructuring of management and administration in a number of functions across the AA, with the exception of our frontline delivery teams in roadside operations and contact centres.

“The proposals we are announcing today are aimed at reorganising and focusing accountability on our emerging strategic priorities, improving the speed of our decision making, reducing the number of layers of management, and reducing costs in order to help fund investment in front line customer service.”

More to follow.