Telford GKN plant set to shed 230 jobs

A total of 230 workers at the company's Hadley Castle plant were issued with redundancy notices last week after it emerged the contract to build the Land Rover T5 chassis was coming to an end in August.

The total number includes 87 workers who had previously been given redundancy notices last year with the end of another Land Rover contract.

The job losses, which are thought to be mainly for welders and fabrication workers, are in the Chassis Systems subsidiary, which is a joint venture between GKN and Metalsa.

The notices were issued on Wednesday last week, and will be subject to a statutory 45-day consultation period.

GKN group communications director Chris Fox said it was "with regret" that the company was announcing an extra 153 redundancies, on top of those made in October last year.

Last year's redundancies were the result of an announcement that the long-running Land Rover Defender would be going out of production.

The T5 chassis is used in the soon-to-be-replaced Land Rover Discovery and also featured in the previous Range Rover Sport line.

Mr Fox said the end of the contract was common knowledge.

One worker, who declined to be named, said it was a huge blow. "I've been here over 20 years, there's been redundancies here before, but I've managed to avoid them," he said.

"It's quite worrying what the future holds."

Matt Jones, of the Unite union, said it was a sad time for workers at GKN.

"I grew up in Telford, and all of my life the MoD and GKN were always good places to get a job, and a job for life," he said.