The household name of British bike building is to leave its Triumph road base in Nottingham for good next year, meaning no more Raleighs will be built or even assembled over here.

The move from Triumph Road is no surprise as previous owners had sold the site anyway, but now Raleigh have done their maths and declared that it is no longer possible for them to build a new British factory and remain profitable.

All manufacturing and assembly will now be done in the Far East, with countries like Bangladesh and Vietnam shortlisted as potential suppliers to avoid the 45.6% duty levied on Chinese bikes. Raleigh will retain a design, distribution and sales centre somewhere in Nottinghamshire but 280 jobs on the assembly side will have to go. Philip Darnton, Raleigh’s chief executive told Bikebiz.co.uk he was “very, very disappointed” at the loss of UK assembly, adding “I thought it could be done but it can’t.”

He also confirmed that although the uncertainty caused by three allotment holders refusing to move from the proposed new factory site wasn’t a key issue, the legal wranglings certainly didn’t help matters.

We wouldn’t be surprised if some of the redundancy money paid out to workers gets spent on a balaclava, a rotavator and a very big bag of weedkiller…..