Staff's 'worst Christmas present'

Staff at the firm look at the city's council housing stock

Workers managing Sheffield's council housing have been given the "worst Christmas present you could get" as job cuts loom, a union spokesman has said.

Up to 200 people could be made redundant by Sheffield Homes, which manages council housing in the city.

The firm has said it might have to lose part of its workforce because of "growing financial pressures" in the current economic climate.

But Kevin Osborne from the union Unite said the situation was "serious".

Mr Osborne said many of the company's employees were unsure about their future at the company following the announcement last month.

"The members are feeling very bad in Sheffield Homes at the moment, as you'd imagine.

"It's possibly the worst Christmas present you could get.

"Certainly since the announcements were made we've had no reassurances from the company that they will not have to make the number of redundancies they originally announced.

"Therefore we're dealing with quite a serious situation as it amounts to 20% of the workforce."

Financial pressures

In September Sheffield Homes said if it could not reduce costs or increase income there would be about 100 redundancies by March 2009 and up to 100 more by March 2010.

At that time a Sheffield Homes spokesman said: "We need to change the way Sheffield Homes delivers its services in order to respond to growing financial pressures and to build a sustainable business that continues to deliver excellent services for future generations.

"These financial pressures have arisen from a combination of factors including the complex way that we are funded and the current economic climate."

The spokesman said the company would do "everything we can" to reduce the number of redundancies and would ensure that it met the government's Decent Homes target by 2010.

He said: "We understand this news will be worrying to our employees and will be doing everything we can to support them through the process."