Old RM site in Barrack Road is 'structurally unsound'

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A former Royal Mail sorting office in Northampton has been declared structurally "unsafe" after thieves caused damage to the inside of the building.
The three-acre site in Barrack Road was destroyed in a fire in September 2003 and has been subject to a large amount of vandalism in recent years.

Last year, Royal Mail installed a fence around the perimeter of the building to try to keep thieves and vandals out but the site has now been declared "unsafe" as the result of damage to cabling caused by a recent attempted theft of copper wiring.

A spokesman for Royal Mail said a warning sign had been put up on the outside of the building and further security measures were planned.

The spokesman said: "At the Barrack Road site further damage caused by theft from the building has made the interior unsafe and we have installed a warning sign. We are again making security measures on site more robust."

The future of the Barrack Road site has been the subject of much speculation in recent years and representatives from Tesco are believed to have met with the West Northamptonshire Development Corporation last September to discuss the possibility of building a supermarket on the site.

Speaking to the Chronicle & Echo last year, Tesco spokesman Tony Fletcher said: "This has been discussed, we can't deny that, but there's no formal conclusion."

But Stephen Welyczko, who used to work at the sorting office and lives nearby, said he did not think it was an appropriate place to build a supermarket.

He said: "Personally I would think it would be a very strange place to have a supermarket. It's a terrible place in terms of traffic, but it is a very big site