Fresh jobs cuts mean a bad start to the new year for Rolls Royce workers in Barnoldswick

A fresh swathe of jobs cuts could bring new year misery to workers at Rolls Royce's embattled Barnoldswick plant.
The Rolls Royce plant in BarnoldswickThe Rolls Royce plant in Barnoldswick
The Rolls Royce plant in Barnoldswick

Leader Times Newspapers reported in April that the prestigious engineering company, which employs hundreds of people from Burnley, Pendle and the Ribble Valley in Barnoldswick, planned to shed 162 jobs because of a drop in workload due to a decline in demand for some of the legacy products made there.

However, the company has now announced its plans to cut 60 jobs from its 900-strong workforce at Barnoldswick in 2019.

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The news will come as a blow to employees of Rolls Royce which invested around £50m. at Barnoldswick in the last year to increase capacity of its wide chord fan blade facility and also to create a Centre of Excellence for Structures at the site. The company said this would help it remain competitive in future.

A Rolls-Royce spokesman said: "We must continually review current workload and assess future customer demand to remain competitive.

"As part of this planning process we have identified a requirement to reduce the headcount of around 900 employees at our Barnoldswick facility by approximately 60 during early 2019.

"We will offer full support to employees who are impacted by the changes and as part of this process we will look at opportunities for the redeployment of affected employees, voluntary severance and reducing the use of agency workers.

"We will seek to avoid compulsory redundancies wherever possible."