Deputy leader of Barnsley council defends Hermes warehouse as leader tells meeting ‘the way out of poverty is to have a job’ UK News

Parcel giant Hermès, now renamed Evri, has announced that 1,400 jobs will be created when its £60million ‘colossus’ hub in Hoyland opens this year.

The 363,000 square foot facility, named Colossus, which will process up to 1.3 million packages per day.

At a full council meeting at Barnsley Town Hall today (26 May), Deputy Chief and Councilor for Rockingham, Councilor Chris Lamb, said: ‘I and my other colleagues in the ward have received many personal criticisms regarding the development of Hermès.

“And for many, many months as this development continued, there were accusations of all kinds of unpleasantness – however… of course everyone is entitled to comment, everyone is entitled to have their point of view.

“These kinds of jobs have never been available in Rockingham Ward until now,” he added.

Sir Steve Houghton CBE, leader of the council added: “The way out of poverty, the way to give you and your family a better future, is to have a job. The most important thing is to have a better paid and well paid job.

“We won’t get his borough where we need it if we don’t have these job sites.

“You can’t build a borough on a benefits system. You have to build it on working people.

“It starts with a good education system to support it, so people can perform at their best and access opportunities.

“Barnsley jobs were historically underground – we don’t have the advantage, and it’s not an advantage, places like Sheffield and others did when their industries collapsed, they found themselves with huge industrial wastelands that could be rebuilt.

“That was not the case at Barnsley.

“The challenge for us over the last 20 years has always been to constantly find venues, and those are tough, and they’re not always welcome and I understand that.

“But if we don’t make these changes, the reality is there will be more food banks, more poverty, more benefits counsellors.

“We have been criticized for this, but we cannot walk away from this major goal.”