Yearsley confirms cold store staff levels

Heywood, Lancashire-based cold storage and distribution specialist Yearsley Group has insisted that its planned new cold store south of Peterborough will employ the number of staff it has previously outlined after a local council voiced concerns.

The firm wants to construct a new 385,000 sq ft cold store at the Gateway Peterborough site in the Great Haddon Employment Zone that would be built in phases and would include a 35m high automated storage facility.

It has suggested the site will employ around 300 staff, but this has been queried by Hampton Parish Council, which has claimed that similar automated facilities elsewhere do not employ such significant numbers of staff.

The council has also raised concerns over the impact of possible effects on sunlight levels in the area.

A spokeswoman for Yearsley, however, told MT the site would, when complete, employ “up to 300”. A subsequent written statement from the firm said this would be made up of around 80 office staff and 220 warehouse and distribution staff and stressed the facility would operate on a 24/7 basis.

Yearsley has also pointed out that the site is over one kilometre from the nearest houses and that any additional shading caused by the building would be limited to a maximum of three minutes a day for about four weeks a year, which had been another issue raised by the council.