Workers and their families gathered outside Lindsey Oil Refinery to demand jobs and production at the site are saved, while 125 employees have already received redundancy notices.
The banks of the Humber are lined with former industries that once brought jobs and wealth north and south of the tidal estuary.
Today, from the end of Hessle and Grimsby’s proud trawler trade to the struggling steel industry, to recent job losses at a giant bioethanol plant, Humberside has become used to challenges. And now even the familiar steel towers of Lindsey Oil Refinery, visible for miles across the flat landscape of the east coast at North Killingholme, are in trouble. The fate of the last British-owned oil refinery – and one of the last five left in the UK – hangs in the balance.
The refinery – which supports 420 directly employed workers plus a further 500 contract jobs and thousands across its supply chain – was taken over by the official receiver in June after its owner, Prax Group, went into administration. On September 30, 125 workers at the refinery were issued redundancy notices by insolvency firm FTI Consulting, while the rest of the workforce could lose their jobs as soon as 31 January.
Across the region, the sense of betrayal is palpable, and on Wednesday more than 150 workers and their families gathered outside the oil refinery to demand jobs and production at the site are saved.
Lee, who has been at Lindsey for 20 years, will find out if his job is safe by the end of the year. “A lot of us are really worried, especially with it being around Christmas,” the 52-year-old, who works on imports and exports and is a senior Unite rep, says. “It’s caused a lot of mental stress to many people. We make the aviation fuel that goes into the typhoon fighters and planes. It’s a colossal loss for the country. We fuel Newcastle, East Midlands, Heathrow, Gatwick. They’ve said they’re making another runway at Gatwick and Heathrow, but who is going to fuel them?”
The local community knows the impact will be felt not just among the workforce, but across Humberside and Lincolnshire – from a network of suppliers to businesses like hotels, pubs and hairdressers.
“We’ve had a raft of industrial sites closing down in Grimsby,” Neil, who works at Lindsey and asked for his name to be changed, told us. “This is an area of deprivation anyway, so many people are living in poverty. Now we’re going to have very highly skilled people either employed directly or contractors from Lindsey who are going to flood the jobs market. It’s not nice to be put in this situation. I have a mortgage, and children including a disabled son.”
His worries are not just for himself. “It’s a site of strategic national security,” he says. “If we go to war with Russia, how are we going to fuel our machinery? We supply 20 to 25 per cent of Britain’s fuel.”
Jamie, a processor operator at the refinery, agrees. “If we don’t refine our own North Sea Oil and rely on imports, if a war were to break out, we would have 72 hours before we wouldn’t have fuel – there would be food shortages,” he says. “We’d quickly be back in medieval times.”
As workers gathered outside the gates on Wednesday, Unite general secretary Sharon Graham directed her words to the Secretary of State. “The government’s warm words for the Lindsey oil refinery workers and the future of the site appear to be yet again nothing but hot air,” she said. “Labour’s net zero plan is failing workers. It amounts to a jobless transition. The government cannot simply wring its hands and say nothing can be done. They are in power and need to show workers whose side they are on.
“In this case, the preferred bidders must be those that want to keep the refinery running, to save jobs and ensure our national energy security. Two out of the UK’s six refineries have closed under Labour’s watch. The government is tin-eared on this issue. As a result, union action for jobs and safety is now being considered in refineries across Britain.”
People in North Lincolnshire have already voted to give Labour a bloody nose by electing a Reform Mayor of Greater Lincolnshire, Dame Andrea Jenkyns, who says she does not believe in climate change. As Lindsey’s fate hangs in the balance, some see it as a test of Labour’s green energy plans.
But the government says the grave situation at the refinery is highly specific to failures by Lindsey’s bosses who “have badly let down the workforce, their families and the local community”. Energy Secretary Ed Miliband has written to the Insolvency Service to demand an investigation into Prax’s conduct.
A spokesman added: “An independent process led by the Official Receiver is on-going to find a buyer for the site and we remain hopeful that a solution will be found that supports jobs on the site long-term. We have also stepped in to take immediate action to fund a Training Guarantee for refinery workers to support them to find new, secure, long-term jobs, including in the growing clean energy workforce in the local area.”
Ed Miliband said: “This Government is investing in the next generation of clean energy jobs, including creating thousands of jobs across Humberside and North Lincolnshire through our upcoming Clean Energy Jobs Plan. From carbon capture to offshore wind turbines, we are delivering a pro-worker, pro-jobs agenda that will deliver good jobs at good wages as we make this country energy secure.”
Sources say new plans will be unveiled this weekend that will include over 400,000 additional clean energy jobs in the country by 2030, and a series of “pro-worker” policies – including proposals to expand trade union access into the energy sector. In North Lincolnshire, workers watch and wait. A sense of injustice at Lindsey was made stronger when – after a gruelling 12-hour night shift – workers at the oil refinery were divided into two rooms and made to wait to be told if they still had a job.
“They knew from what room they were in, what was happening”, says Jamie who is also the Unite branch chairman. “If you’re standing in a room with a shift controller, you know you’re staying but if you’re standing in a room without one, you know you’re going. It was inhumane.”
For the government the race is on to stem the casualties of greed, neglect and a changing world in Britain’s industrial heartlands – while it rebuilds a clean, prosperous future for communities like those living along the Humber.