Rolls-royce to cut 4,600 posts during next two years in fresh restructuring

● Majority of cuts to hit UK but Scotland expected to avoid much of the fallout

Business Secretary Greg Clark has pledged he will work with Rolls-royce to ensure the “interests of the workforce are strongly represented” after the engineering giant took the axe to around 4,600 jobs.

The aero and marine engine maker, which is looking to slash costs by another £400 million a year, said the bulk of the reductions would affect the UK workforce and take place over the next two years. About a third of the cuts are expected by the end of 2018.

Rolls said the overhaul, which follows its announcement in January that it plans to slash its five operating businesses to three core units, will impact support functions and management, including within engineering.

But the group insisted that it would honour a previous pledge not to impose compul- sory redundancies on unionrepresented staff, including at its sites in Derby, Hucknall and Annesley.

This is the largest reduction in the company’s headcount since 2001, when it announced plans to cut 5,000 posts, plus 1,000 contractors, which at the time was around 12 per cent of the workforce.

Overall, Rolls has around 55,000 employees worldwide, of whom 26,000 are in the UK, with 15,700 of those in Derby. It employs around 19,400 engineers.

The firm indicated that job cuts were less likely in Scotland, where it employs a total of just over 1,600 people – the vast majority of whom are based at its Inchinnan plant.

Chief executive Warren East said: “We have made progress in improving our day-to-day operations and strengthening our leadership, and are now turning to reduce the complexity that often slows us down and leads to duplication of effort.

“It is never an easy decision to reduce our workforce, but we must create a commercial organisation that is as worldleading as our technologies.”

Shadow business minister Gill Furniss, speaking in the Commons, said the announcement was “deeply disturbing news” and called on Clark to implement “a reinvigorated local industrial strategy”.

The Business Secretary responded, saying he was working very closely with the local enterprise partnership to ensure that “opportunities that exist in Derby and the West Midlands are taken up”.

Speaking earlier in the question session he said: “Rolls-royce has told me the announcement does not reflect a reduction in growth by the company, indeed the reverse… the company has told me that it will continue to recruit engineers, technicians and apprentices.”