Eight hundred staff will be lost from Trinity Mirror over the next three years, with its regional newspaper industry likely to be the hardest hit.

The company announced the news alongside its latest set of interim results, which showed gains in the regional portfolio.

Its local papers include the Newcastle Evening Chronicle, Liverpool Echo and Birmingham Evening Mail.

Two hundred of the job losses will take place this year, with 85 of those coming from within the digital business.

Staff will be reduced through redundancy, natural turnover and retraining for other posts.

A spokesman for the company said: “There will be more losses from the regionals simply because that is the biggest side of the business.

“The company is seeking to exploit its scale and get the kind of cost savings you would expect to gain from a company the size of Trinity.”

No breakdown of where the jobs losses would occur, either on a geographic basis or by discipline has been given, except for that there would be no geographic bias.

The decision was taken after a comprehensive review of the business to maximise growth and get the best out of current trading conditions.

The company was looking for £25-£28m of gross cost savings in 2002, increasing to £30-£35m per annum in 2003.

The interim report, looking at figures for the half-year to July 1, said the group was still well placed to benefit from any improvement in the market and had good medium to long term growth prospects.

The group’s regional newspapers fared better than other parts of the business – posting a 6.5 per cent like-for-like increase, due in part to strong recruitment advertising.

Revenue across the company’s three national newspapers in that period was 2.3 per cent up on the same time last year, but fell by 7 per cent in June. Advertising revenue across the Scottish portfolio fell by 2.6 per cent to £25.8m.

Trinity Mirror has posted an interim pre-tax profit of £80.9m, a 9.7 per cent decrease from the £89.6m posted in the same period last year.

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