Mubasher: Japanese automobile manufacturer Honda is to shut its only car plant in the UK as the risk of Brexit rises. 

Honda will announce the closure of its Swindon auto factory in southern England in 2022 which will lead to cutting 3,500 jobs, the lawmaker for Swindon Justin Tomlinson told Reuters.

“This is not Brexit-related. It is a reflection of the global market. They are seeking to consolidate production in Japan,” Tomlinson, lawmaker for North Swindon, told the London-based news agency. 

Honda refused to comment on the “speculation”.

The Japanese automaker previously revealed a year earlier that it would shut one its plants in Japan in a bid to consolidate production, while focusing on new vehicle technologies.

With above 160,000 cars, Honda’s Swindon plant built more than 10% of the UK’s total automobile production of 1.52 million vehicles.

In October 2017, the Japanese car maker revealed plans to stop making vehicles at its Sayama plant in Japan by 2022 due to a shrinking domestic market.

“The car industry in the UK over the last two decades has been the jewel in the crown for the manufacturing sector – and now it has been brought low by the chaotic Brexit uncertainty,” the national officer for the automotive sector at Unite, UK’s largest trade union, Des Quinn said.