Redundancies hit North West offices of Metro

Associated Newspaper’s freesheet Metro appears to have scaled down its presence in the region, with a raft of redundancies in its Manchester office and uncertainty over job losses at the now defunct Liverpool base.

Metro MD Steve Auckland would not be drawn on the exact numbers of job losses in the two cities and would not comment on the future of the operation, or the number of people still based at the regional divisions.

However, How-Do understands that around 10 members of staff have been made redundant in Manchester, including the lifestyle editor Ruth Allan.

The losses are believed to take in staff across editorial, sales and admin.

The Liverpool office, which was never on the same scale as the Manchester operation, has now been closed and rolled into its sister regional base.

When quizzed on the developments, Auckland said he could say no more than referring back to the statement he released last week, in which he noted: “The impact of the economic downturn is likely to affect Metro’s advertising revenues into next year.

“Like most media organisations we have been busy streamlining the business to deal with a tougher market.

“We have benefited from the implementation of a new editorial system this year which has allowed us more flexibility in how we produce Metro.

“This has resulted is some redundancies and non replacement of positions.

“We have made these changes to remain profitable, enable us to significantly increase our investment in both digital and green initiatives and emerge in an even stronger position in the next 12-18 months.”

The Metro MD would also not be drawn on what impact the redundancies would have in terms of regional editorial content.

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