EIGHTY jobs in a North Yorkshire town will be affected by the announcement that the country's largest distributor of construction products and materials is to shut its office there.

Wolseley UK said it would close Central House, its temporary office in Otley Road, Harrogate, as part of its plans to consolidate its 11 head offices into two UK centres.

One of these is at its Ripon site in Boroughbridge Road, which will be comprehensively redeveloped to house support services such as finance, payroll and IT.

The other centre will entail opening a new, purpose-built headquarters near Warwick, to which the bulk of UK jobs will go.

Staff will start to move to the new location in Warwick - which will house the strategic and executive leadership team, brand management, marketing, product management, commercial finance and human resources - over the next 18 months.

Staff at the Harrogate base, set up two years ago following extensive flooding at Ripon, will be offered some posts at either Ripon or Warwick. Already the announcement has triggered the 90-day consultation process and some redundancies may occur.

In Ripon, where 339 people are on the payroll, it is anticipated that about 350 people will be located at the redeveloped site, where there will be new buildings next to the main office block.

Managing director Adrian Barden said: "We understand the impact the changes could have on our staff in Ripon and Harrogate and we have begun a process of comprehensive consultation. We will be providing as much help as possible for people whose jobs are relocating, including helping them find alternative jobs in the area if they do not wish to move.

"We have grown rapidly over the last few years and we recently announced the streamlining of our operations into seven specialist brands under the umbrella of Wolseley UK.

To underpin this new unified business structure and to support our continued growth plans we need a more centralised office set-up."

Wolseley UK sits at the heart of the construction supply chain, providing construction products and materials through more than 1,400 branches of Plumb Center, Build Center, Pipe Center, Drain Center, Climate Center, Hire Center and Parts Center.

None of the branches will be affected by the head office changes, nor will its five distribution centres in the UK.

Updated: 11:33 Tuesday, May 11, 2004