CHELMSFORD'S DVLA office has shut after nearly 40 years in the city, leaving 55 people without jobs.
The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency office, in Hoffmanns Way, has closed – as will the 39 other such offices around the country by the end of the year – to turn the DVLA into a "digital business".
Barry Cooper, 61, who worked as an admin clerk there for five years and now faces the prospect of unemployment, said: "I think without doubt everybody would have carried on working there. "We had no wish or desire to move on."
The centre served about 500 people a day.
Mr Cooper, who lives in Springfield, said that you could have a new documentation in about 15 minutes at the local office, but now the only contact available with the agency is via its head office in Swansea, Wales – and that could take anything up to three weeks.
The office, which has now been dismantled, was closed to the public on Friday, October 25, at 5pm and shut its doors to its employees six days later.
