Laing O’Rourke to cut up to 150 UK jobs

Laing O’Rourke is proposing to make up to 150 job cuts from its UK workforce.

The redundancies are most likely to fall within the contractor’s support services and main offices, although jobs in other parts of the business could also be affected. It plans a collective consultation with a number of staff based at its Dartford head office.

The news was announced at a business briefing delivered as a live webinar to its Europe Hub staff this morning.

Josh Murray, group director, human capital, said: “In March we moved quickly to protect our business from the pandemic, and since then, have been open with our people that our priority was to return projects to full productivity, and reinstate everyone’s full pay and benefits as quickly as possible. 

“That’s been achieved, and we are making good progress on site, but unfortunately, we will still have to make changes that impact around 150 roles, to help us manage costs in the current market while still investing in our strategic plans.

“The resilience we’ve built into our business over recent years has served us well, but we now must rebuild these buffers on the back of covid-19.

“In the current difficult market conditions, with a range of new requirements on the business as a result of the crisis, and with the possibility of further shocks, we simply cannot afford to do everything the same way we had planned.  

“We have done everything we can to limit the impact on our people, which is why we first brought all staff back from furlough and restored everyone’s pay and entitlements to pre-covid levels. Today we’ve taken the necessary step to inform staff that we are developing proposals that may require 150 current roles to go between now and October.”

Laing O’Rourke employs 8,000 people in the UK.