Under threat Shropshire factory BAE Systems could yet be saved from the axe and the number of job losses reduced, union chiefs claimed today.

Unite regional officer Stefan Blasczyk said he was optimistic about what could happen over the coming 12 months after the defence giant yesterday announced it is to close its works in Hadley Castle, Telford, with the loss of up to 224 jobs.

Telford is one of three plants which BAE Systems said would close in June next year and Mr Blasczyk said a meeting of union officials at the affected sites was due to be held in Leeds on Thursday.

He said: “The meeting is to discuss more details of the company’s proposals and we are optimistic that there is a lot of time between now and next year and a lot of things can happen.

“We will be hoping we can mitigate the circumstances and find ways of making sure the redundancies don’t take place.

“I am optimistic we can cut the number of job losses. We are also hoping to keep the Telford site open.”

Mr Blasczyk said a lot of the decision making would be based around new orders BAE might be able to secure or possibly bring forward.

He said Unite’s Telford staff representative Nigel Blunt was expected to attend Thursday’s meeting and he would probably be joined by his shopfloor counterpart Carl Dodd. The representatives would report back to Mr Blasczyk the following Tuesday.

Meanwhile, Wrekin MP Mark Pritchard has accused the Government of letting Telford down badly in the wake of the closure announcement.

Mr Pritchard, Secretary of the Conservative Parliamentary Defence Committee, said: “This is another huge blow to local defence jobs. If the Government had not cancelled the order for the next generation of fighting armoured vehicles these job losses could have been avoided.

“The workforce are some of the best defence engineers and technical people in the country.”

A spokeswoman for the MoD said they regretted the job losses.