Jaguar Land Rover to axe 1,000 jobs over Brexit and poor diesel sales

Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) plans to shed around 1,000 jobs from two of its manufacturing plants in the Midlands due to declining car sales.

An insider told Reuters that car production at the company’s factories in Solihull and Castle Bromwich would be cut, resulting in 1,000 agency workers losing their jobs.

While JLR has neither confirmed nor denied the job losses, a company spokesperson told the news site that the car firm would be making “some adjustments” to its production schedules and the levels of agency staff.

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The jobs cuts are believed to have been triggered by a 26% decline in JLR’s UK car sales over the first three months of this year, The Guardian reports.

Many attribute the slump in sales to confusion over the Government’s stance on diesel cars, the newspaper says, along with uncertainty over the effects of Brexit on the new vehicle market.

JLR is the largest car manufacturer in the UK, according to BBC News. It currently has around 40,000 employees, 10,000 of which are located at its manufacturing plant in Solihull.

The staff expected to be affected by the cuts are temporary workers, the BBC says. Many of them are based at the Solihull facility.

Despite the reported job losses, JLR says it plans to continue to recruit “large numbers of highly skilled engineers, graduates and apprentices”.