Little remains at one-time hive of industry (From Worcester News)

Little remains at one-time hive of industry

2:50pm Friday 3rd September 2010 in

By Lauren Rogers » @laurenrogersWN #WENews

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THE former Kays factory in Worcester is fast disappearing.

Three years after the site closed and the catalogue firm moved away from the city, demolition work at the old factory site in Bransford Road, St John’s, is almost complete.

The large ‘carton’ store has been knocked down and by the end of this year there will be no buildings left standing.

Workers began pulling down the factory and associated buildings last year, but had to stop because former site users were still occupying part of the land. Work started up again in July this year when they moved out.

The developers, SJS Property Management, won outline planning permission for the site to be used for housing in March 2009.

The planning inspectorate decision followed a lengthy battle with Worcester City Council planning bosses who wanted to retain the site for employment.

A spokesman for SJS Property Management said the next step is to build a new road on the site.

The developers must must secure further planning permission before they can actually start building houses on the land.

Comments(5)

MrStJohns says...
3:00pm Fri 3 Sep 10

Indeed the end of an era, but hopefully the start of a new one in that area. With the planned business science park from the university on the grove farm site. The area should benefit from more employment once again, so long as the nimby brigade don’t find a rare newt or something to stop it all. By the way we have the wonderful Barclay brothers to thank for shutting down this once vibrant hub of employment, thanks for that you pair of *****

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molecat says...
4:46pm Fri 3 Sep 10

MrStJohns wrote:
Indeed the end of an era, but hopefully the start of a new one in that area. With the planned business science park from the university on the grove farm site. The area should benefit from more employment once again, so long as the nimby brigade don’t find a rare newt or something to stop it all. By the way we have the wonderful Barclay brothers to thank for shutting down this once vibrant hub of employment, thanks for that you pair of *****

It's almost like living on Sark, except they only shut one business down here!
Let's hope the Barclays never set their beady eyes on buying Newsquest, MrStJohns, as even those astericks would end up in litigation for you! :-)

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varien says...
5:50pm Fri 3 Sep 10

Remember when Littlewoods ( The Barclay Brothers) first showed an interest in buying Kays. They had to seek government approval to buy because of the rules governing monopoly.
Remember how our then illustrious MP, Michael Foster, together with other civic dignitaries, backed the bid by Littlewoods as being the "only way to guarantee Kays survival".
One year after buying Kays Littlewoods announced its closure - Surprise, surprise..........As
k any ex Kays employee. They new the writing was on the wall the minute the company was sold.
It is indeed sad that Kays came to an end in Worcester. Virtually everyone who lived in Worcester new someone who worked or had worked at Kays. There are however some people who were glad to see the back of Kays in St Johns as they considered Kays building a blot on the landscape. Mind you we do have Kays to thank for one particular blot on the landscape and that is that monstrosity of a building in front of Shrub Hill Station - originally built to house the photographic studios and department for the publication and distribution of their catalogue.

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Kalibo says...
11:46pm Fri 3 Sep 10

But also Varien, they are reponsible for some of the best period buildings in Worcester from Kays' earlier years. I don't like the building either, not because of the looks, I am used to them now, my Nan (an ex. office worker on the site) was telling me earlier about it's parent company, GUS plc, which is really what the building should be named after, the comglomerate hired over 50,000 people, the highest proportion of those employees were on this site, and to see the site so desolate is both eery and a timely reminder of what capitalist fatcats can do to practically a whole community.
Funny fact that a while back, if you wrote the barclay brothers into Google images one of the images was under the tag of "the c**t brothers".

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Kalibo says...
12:10am Sat 4 Sep 10

We should join with that Sark population and stage an uprising, anyone for a revolution?

Little remains at one-time hive of industry (From Worcester News)

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