Whitbread says number of redundancies expected to be ‘significantly less' than 6,000

Premier Inn owner Whitbread has said the number of redundancies across the business is expected to be "significantly less" than the 6,000 originally anticipated.

On 22 September, the group announced it had entered into consultation with staff on proposals that could result in a combination of redundancies and reductions in contracted hours.

Whitbread said the number of redundancies could be up to 6,000; however, as the first phase of the consultation period comes to an end, the group has said it now expects the number of redundancies across both phases to be significantly less than 6,000 as a result of higher levels of colleague redeployment and greater levels of flexibility in working hours.

A statement from the group said: "While the newly extended government Job Retention Scheme is welcome and will undoubtedly help support us through a difficult period in the short to medium term, our current plans will help ensure that we have the flexibility to respond to changes in customer demand going forward.

"We fully appreciate these are challenging times and our priority throughout has been to ensure the process is fair and that our impacted colleagues remain supported."

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