'Volunteer' Vauxhall employees to return to work at Luton site after two months

The car manufacturer says reinforced health measures have already been implemented before the voluntary employees are back on site.

But of Luton's 16,000 Vauxhall workers - just a third are expected to return to work tomorrow.

The Luton factory stopped operations on March 19 when plans were announced to close for two weeks, before the government initiated a UK-wide lockdown.

Yann Vincent, executive vice president of Group PSA, said: “Protecting our employees and protecting our company remain the two intangible principles for the conduct of our operations.

"Our enhanced measures protocol offers a high level of protection to our employees and is the first criterion for restarting our production sites.

"As industrial activity is driven by commercial activity, which is our second criterion, we are gradually and securely relaunching our industrial apparatus to manufacture the cars expected by our customers. These two criteria will guide our decisions for the coming weeks and months.”

During its shutdown period, Groupe PSA says it has introduced a series of sanitary measures for each manufacturing site.

Staff will have their temperatures checked, they will need to wear goggles and masks, and some of the shift patterns will also be changed. These measures have been widely shared with trade unions and have undergone several audits.

Vauxhall managing director Stephen Norman told BBC Newsnight last week: "We need to have orders for the vehicles we're setting out to produce.

"The key blocking point that we have... is the opening of car dealerships in the United Kingdom."

The government has suggested car showrooms could reopen in June if the spread of coronavirus is under control.