The number of job losses has been halved and compulsory redundancies avoided as part of a restructure at The Scotsman and its sister titles, it has emerged.

Plans to cut up to 30 journalists’ jobs at The Scotsman, Scotland on Sunday and the Edinburgh Evening News were announced by management at the Johnston Press titles in March and a voluntary redundancy scheme was opened.

But following negotiations with the National Union of Journalists, the number of job losses was reduced to 20 last month and now a final figure of 15 has been settled on, which includes roles such as features sub-editors.

The restructure at the titles will also see pages cut across a number of sections as part of the cost-cutting and changes to the weekend magazine portfolio so some supplements are merged together.

NUJ Scottish organiser Paul Holleran said journalists had been moved around in order to avoid compulsory redundancies.

He said: “They nearly reached the figure they were looking for and the editor worked with us to redeploy and rejig things.

“We don’t like seeing any job losses but I think it would be good if all management dealt with things in as civilised a manner.

“There’s one or two people who feel they have been hard done by but you will always get that.”

NUJ Scotland tweeted on Friday: “Negotiations on restructuring at Scotsman almost completed. Always painful to lose jobs but meaningful consultation saved half jobs at risk.”

The Scotsman has also just announced a ‘Friends of the Scotsman’ scheme which offers public organisations cheaper subscriptions in return for supplying content to the paper.

When the job cuts were announced, Scotsman managing director Stuart Birkett said the company aimed to carry out the restructure through voluntary redundancies and redeployment.

The company has not yet responded to requests for a comment.