Northcliffe Media has concluded its consultation over plans to introduce two new centralised subbing hubs in Bristol and Swansea, with nearly 30 jobs set to be lost.

The new hubs will cover all the titles in the group’s West and Wales newspaper division, including the Bristol Evening Post, Western Daily Press, South Wales Evening Post, Gloucester Citizen, Gloucestershire Echo, Western Gazette and Bath Chronicle.

Staff have now been told how many people are being made redundant at each centre with the equivalent of 29.3 full-time posts set to be lost overall.

The full-time equivalent of 9.3 jobs are being lost in Bath, 5.8 in Cheltenham, 6.6 in Yeovil and 7.6 in Swansea.

At the same time, however, four new posts are being created at the new Bristol hub, two for general roles and two who will covering a permanent 2pm-10pm late-shift.

In charge of the Bristol operation will be Sid Johnson, currently group print production editor at Bristol News and Media.

The introduction of the new hubs, originally planned for August, has now been postponed until Monday 7 September.

The consultation process has been overseen by West and Wales regional editor Mike Norton, but neither he nor anyone else from the company is making any official comment on the plans.

Comments

ANON (15/07/2009 12:55:58)
More hubs? They save money (which IS important in a recession) but news-wise they don’t work and they are an admin nightmare with remote offices.
Reporters unable to talk personally to subs can look forward to spending their days answering e mails and phone calls from the hub instead of what they are paid to do, find and write stories.
just see.

Dave (15/07/2009 13:26:32)
Fear not, the people who take redundancy will be back in a freelance capacity within the month…

Mr Redundant (15/07/2009 15:30:45)
“Fear not, the people who take redundancy will be back in a freelance capacity within the month…”
If not sooner, seeing as there’s four jobs going in the pool on HTFP at the moment…

Former Citizen (15/07/2009 15:57:05)
Who needs subs with local knowledge? certainly not the lawyers who will be sitting like sharks waiting for someone to up-cock.

bristololdboy (15/07/2009 16:58:02)
This is madness. The Bristol centre is advertising for four subs on the same day it is revealed that 30 jobs are to go in the West and Wales. Does this mean that nobody at the current centres wants these four jobs or is this a cynical exercise in wrecking people’s lives? Journalists in particular and our cherished newspapers in general deserve intelligent management which understands its duty of care and responsibilites to its employees. No wonder the comps were so bolshie! This is utterly disgraceful.

JP (16/07/2009 13:08:24)
Northcliffe: “At the heart of all things local”.

Greencardigan (16/07/2009 15:46:16)
Perhaps they’re recruiting because not enough subs transferred from the other sites. If so, that’s not “a cynical exercise in wrecking people’s lives” it’s allowing staff to take their legal right to redundancy.

Greycardigandowntablesub (17/07/2009 09:58:33)
Works really well in North East – get rid of the subs, create a hub, then re-employ the subs you got rid of at a freelance rate because nobody else can do/wants the job.
And what, pray, is .3 or .6 of a job? Part-time positions? Or is 1.6 a whole persons job? This being Northcliffe you are expected to do your own work plus 3/5ths of someone who was chopped earlier in the culling fields and never replaced?
And don’t get me started on the bug-ridden Agresso expenses/finance system that AN Media now use so that we can add finance administrator to our ever-increasing jobtiltes/workload.
Northcliffe – where less is more.