ALMOST 170 York postal sorting jobs could be at risk after Royal Mail confirmed it is proposing to transfer the work to Leeds.

Union leaders have been worried about the future of York’s sorting office in Leeman Road since Royal Mail decided in 2008 to sort second-class York post in Leeds.

But now York Central MP Hugh Bayley has revealed it has a firm proposal to extend its mail centre in Leeds and transfer work there from York and Bradford.

He says under the proposal, the Leeman Road office would operate in future as a delivery centre only, similar to Birch Park office at Huntington, and he has asked the company how many jobs could be lost at Leeman Road. A Royal Mail spokesman said there were currently 168 staff employed in processing at York Mail Centre.

But the Communication Workers’ Union (CWU) previously claimed a total of about 350 jobs could be at risk.

Royal Mail said if the proposal went ahead, it expected to be able to find work for everyone who wished to remain with the company, and it aimed to make changes without recourse to compulsory redundancies.

Mr Bayley said he was concerned about the impact of the change not only on postal workers but also on the service, customers and the environment. He said he sent out hundreds of letters every month, with the majority for constituents who lived in York.

He said: “It doesn’t make sense environmentally or economically for these letters will be collected from a pillar box in the centre of York, transported along the A64 to Leeds, only to be returned to York, to be delivered.”

He also called for a public consultation, as he claimed had been promised previously, and spoke of his concerns that the York postmark could be lost.

The Royal Mail spokesman said in line with a national agreement reached with the CWU, it was reviewing its processing and some delivery operations in Yorkshire and the north-east of England to ensure it had the right sites to accommodate world-class technology and equipment being rolled out.

He said the company had been “sharing an initial proposal” on how it believed it could reshape the mail centre network so it was best placed to meet the challenges ahead.

“Internal consultation with the unions is continuing and, while we are not obliged to consult publicly on operational changes essential to secure the universal postal service, we will continue to keep our stakeholders updated as our plans develop,” he said CWU spokesman Paul Clays said he believed the changes would adversely affect the standard of service to customers in North Yorkshire.