A mother-of-six has been left “in the sh**” after the closure of a North East McColl’s store left her with no job despite promises workers will be offered a position elsewhere.

Lora Thacker, from Darlington, worked at the Yarm Road McColl’s store for 10 months as a store supervisor.

However, just days ago she found out her store would be closing after Morrisons revealed proposals to shut more than 132 loss-making McColl’s stores.

According to McColl’s those working at the stores would be offered a position elsewhere in the convenience chain.

But despite this, no such offers have been made to Ms Thacker who says she now has to apply and be interviewed for a position like everyone else.

She said: “Last night when I found out I had to apply for other jobs, that got to me, because we were already in the company it’s not our fault that our jobs have gone.

“Morrison’s is a big enough company to put people in work somewhere, but they haven’t done that they’ve just told us we have to apply like everyone else, it’s not good.”

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She added: “We have to go on the McColl’s website and Morrison’s website, apply for a job like everyone else and we’ve been given information about how to prepare for the interview process, so we need to be interviewed like everyone else and there’s no guarantee of a job at the end of it.

“So we’ve literally been given less than two-weeks notice and we’re basically being kicked to the curb.”

Ms Thacker says she currently relies on the wage from her job to pay her rent.

She added: “If I can’t find a job after this I’m pretty knackered, I’ve got six children I need to think about, so it’s quite a hard one.”

She continued to stress that she was only made aware of the closure after it appeared in the local paper.

She said: “Basically we literally found out the day it was in the paper, so I don’t whether they were planning on keeping it from us until the day we closed I think they only told us because it was in the paper.

“So all of us are pretty much knackered, obviously we were aware of shop closures over the past few months and there was a list of stores closing.

“But our store wasn’t on it, but since then we’ve had someone come in and fix the air conditioning which hasn’t been fixed for about five or six years.

“So with things like that going on and things getting fixed, it was just a pure shock to everyone because they were fixing up the store and everything.

“We’re just at the brunt of it and it seems like we’ve been stuck in the shit and there’s nothing we can do about it.”

The Northern Echo has contacted McColl’s for a comment.

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