Editorial redundancies at the Cambridge Evening News were not being ruled out as the company announced money-saving job cuts.

The owners, Cambridge Newspapers Ltd, are blaming a downturn in revenues for the decision.

The number of staff that may have to leave has not been decided upon, but bosses anticipate "less than 20" across all departments around the company as a whole.

The company publishes the 33,000 circulation, five-edition Cambridge Evening News, the Cambridge Town Crier, Cambridge Weekly News, and other Weekly News editions for Ely, Haverhill, Huntingdon, St Ives, Newmarket, Royston, Saffron Walden, St Neots, and Cambourne.

Staff, who say morale is at a low, were told in meetings across the company on Friday afternoon.

They claim to have been let down after being told at the start of this year that if they accepted a pay deal of a 2.7 per cent increase then the paper would not need to consider redundancies.

A company statement said: "We have worked hard in recent months to curb discretionary spending across the company in an effort to mitigate the downturn in revenues that has been plaguing the regional press nationwide.

"Unfortunately, this has not been sufficient to deal with the severity of the downturn and it is with enormous regret that we are being forced to follow the path of so many others in reducing the size of our workforce.

"We do not yet know the full extent of the numbers likely to be involved.

"However, we do not expect the number of redundancies across the company as a whole to exceed 20 in number out of a total workforce of more than 430. These will be drawn from across the wider business."

The National Union of Journalists father of chapel Nik Shelton is in the middle of a 15-day cycle ride from Land's End to John O'Groats and was unavailable for comment.