Anger as ITV axes 40% of news jobs

10:09pm Tuesday 30th September 2008

ITV News has come under attack from unions and MPs after announcing plans to axe more than 400 jobs across its regional services under plans to save millions of pounds.

Unions representing journalists and technical workers warned of industrial action to fight the proposal to axe 40% of staff, although in one region workers said the cuts amounted to 50% of employees.

Politicians condemned the cuts as a "major setback" for public service broadcasting and an attack on ITV's regional news coverage and criticised the role of media regulator Ofcom.

Labour MP John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington), secretary of the National Union of Journalists' parliamentary group said: "Not only are hundreds of hard-working journalists facing job losses but our communities are facing a sizeable attack to the regional news provision they rely upon.

"High quality public service broadcasting on public and commercial channels, including regional news provision, is absolutely integral to our society. It links up people across the UK in a democratic process of debate. I am extremely disappointed that Ofcom has allowed these cuts to take place."

A letter sent to journalists, technical staff and other employees in England and Wales said current staffing levels of 1,075 would be reduced to 646, a cut of 429 jobs.

The company has already said it wants to make savings of £40 million and unions were braced for details of job cuts with officials saying their worst fears had been realised.

Luke Crawley, national officer of the technicians' union Bectu, said 17 separate news programmes would be reduced to nine regions, which was bound to have an adverse effect on quality.

Bectu also warned of industrial action to fight compulsory redundancies.

ITV News said it expected around 430 jobs to be lost across the group and, while volunteers were being sought, it could not rule out compulsory redundancies.

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