Thames looks to 300 redundancies to cut costs

Thames Water is looking to make around 300 redundancies as part of a cost reduction push.

According to a spokesperson: “The last year has been an extremely challenging year for the business and we continue to take a rigorous approach to financial discipline throughout the company in order to operate within budget. We need to make more difficult but necessary decisions to ensure we continue to deliver to our budgets. That’s why today we’ve announced a range of measures to reduce our costs further and become more efficient. This means we are consulting on a proposal which could lead to the potential loss of around 300 roles.”

Thames employs 8,200 people in all. The company said frontline roles would not be affected, “with roles at risk primarily in our retail and digital functions,” according to the spokesperson. Thames added that half the roles are currently vacant and that it would seek to minimise compulsory redundancies through redeployment and voluntary redundancy.

Unions, GMB, Unite and Unison have been consulted and will continue to be involved, Thames said.

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