DOZENS of postal workers based in Sedgley Park have lost their jobs after postal giant Whistl ended its home delivery service.

The Dutch-owned company – formerly known as TNT Post – suspended home deliveries last month after losing funding.

Dozens of workers at the Whistl depot in Mountheath Trading Estate, which manages deliveries across north Manchester, were sent home.

Today, the firm confirmed it is permanently ending its home delivery service – threatening up to 1,800 jobs nationally and hundreds across Greater Manchester.

Whistl had been delivering a postal service in the M and L postcodes for several years in direct competition with Royal Mail.

The company announced it was reviewing the viability of rolling out its delivery service after private equity backer LDC pulled out of funding to help expand the business last month.

Parent group PostNL said in a statement: "Following the termination of the discussions on the proposed investment in Whistl UK to fund the further rollout of its current end to end (E2E) activities, we have assessed alternative scenarios for Whistl's E2E operations.

"Further to this assessment, it has been decided to end Whistl's E2E operations.

“Whistl remains committed to further developing its successful activities in the UK, including downstream access (DSA) service, door drop media, packets & parcels and logistics.

"Whistl is in ongoing consultation with the affected employees through their union and employee representatives to minimise the impact of this decision."

The company pointed out it would continue to collect 80 million items a week to be fed into the Royal Mail system for final delivery.

Around 1,800 workers were employed on the service, wearing the distinctive orange coloured uniforms.Many were on zero hours contracts.

The company has a main delivery depot in Warrington and six smaller hubs across Greater Manchester.