Job losses imminent at Bovis Lend Lease

Bovis Lend Lease is planning a swathe of redundancies as workloads at the construction giant dry up.

Job losses are expected to be severest across the firm’s southern division.

CJ understands Bovis has launched a consultation exercise among its 2,000 staff.

Sources close to the company estimated potential redundancies at between 300 and 400.

But Bovis said that figure was “way off the mark”.

Meanwhile one disgruntled Bovis employee complained that the redundancies seemed to be mostly among UK workers.

He said: "Their Athletes' Village project is staffed by numerous people including by a large number of seconded in Australian managers. Is it fair to terminate long serving British employees in the UK when jobs they could easily do at the Athletes Village are filled by Austalian secondees?"

Chief executive Murray Coleman said: “We aim to keep the number of people leaving the business to an absolute minimum. A number of projects have been delayed or are scheduled for completion over the coming months, particularly within the UK South business.

“But we’re fortunate that we have wide-ranging opportunities we can leverage, and we’re looking across all our operations, both in the UK and abroad, to minimise this impact on
our staff. 

“Like most organisations in the UK construction sector, Bovis Lend Lease is reviewing our business operations to ensure we are in a strong position to weather the economic downturn, and are well placed for when this undeniably tough market recovers.”

Developments by parent company Lend Lease such as the Olympic Village and the Elephant and Castle scheme in south London have been hit by funding troubles.