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Train maker Alstom is close to a deal with the UK government over an order for new trains that could prevent mass job losses at its historic factory in Derby.
Transport secretary Mark Harper met the French company’s chief executive Henri Poupart-Lafarge in the UK capital on Tuesday to discuss an order for 10 new Elizabeth Line trains for Transport for London.
“We are now in a period of intense discussions with the government and Transport for London . . . This could help secure the future of the [Derby] Litchurch Lane site,” Alstom said in a statement.
A person close to the talks said the two sides were close to a deal, although they cautioned that no final agreement had been reached.
The order would represent a last-ditch effort to fill a gap in production in Derby, where trains have been built in the same Victorian red-brick sheds since the 1870s and where voluntary redundancies have already begun after work to build new trains dried up.
The financial details of any order have not been disclosed.
Alstom had warned the government it was planning to mothball the factory, putting 1,300 jobs at risk, as the next trains on its order books were not scheduled to be built until 2025 at the earliest, when work on new HS2 high-speed trains was scheduled to begin.
Some employees have already accepted voluntary redundancy and will leave the factory, but the person close to the talks said a significant chunk of the workforce could be saved with a deal for new trains.
The new hope for the factory came after the Treasury agreed to fund new Elizabeth Line trains because of the huge demand the service through central London had seen since it opened in 2022, Harper wrote in a letter to Derby North Conservative MP Amanda Solloway.
“While a considerable amount of work remains to conclude the negotiations and confirm the business case, I am confident . . . a solution is in sight,” Harper wrote in the letter posted on social media site X.
The train building industry in the UK is in crisis following five years with no major orders for new trains.
Japan’s Hitachi has also warned it is also on the brink of axing jobs at its factory in Newton Aycliffe in the north-east of England because it has no new orders and expects to run out of work within a year.