Jaguar Land Rover to cut 4,500 UK jobs

The company said the cuts, which are expected to mainly affect managerial and office staff and which follow 1500 losses in 2018, are being made as part of an ongoing effort to reduce costs by £2.5bn over the next 18 months.

The company – which announced a 4.6 per cent decline in sales in its most recent trading figures faces a series of challenges including a dramatic decline in sales in China (driven by slowing economic growth and trade tensions with the US) a Europe-wide slump in sales of diesel and concerns over the impact of Brexit.

Commenting on the latest announcement, the firm’s CEO Dr Ralf Speth said: “We are taking decisive action to help deliver long-term growth, in the face of multiple geopolitical and regulatory disruptions.”

In a sequence of announcements made since June 2018, JLR has revealed that production of its Discovery model would move from Solihull to Slovakia and that 1,000 workers at its Castle Bromwich plant would drop to a three-day week. The Solihull plant – which has already shed around 1,000 workers – also saw a two-week shutdown in October to compensate for the shrinking demand for JLR vehicles.