Jaguar Land Rover opens voluntary redundancy programme for UK staff

Profit fell to £14m from £2.5bn the prior year

Jaguar Land Rover informed UK workers and the Unite union on Saturday that it would open a voluntary redundancy programme for salaried and management team members, the BBC and Sunday Times reported. The Times reported JLR could eliminate as many as 4,000 positions over two years; JLR told the BBC it was yet to confirm the number but said the company needed to save about £1.7bn over the same period.

The carmaker, owned by India’s Tata Motors, employs about 44,000 people worldwide, with around 30,000 based in the UK. Most of those UK workers are at 14 plants across the West Midlands, where JLR is one of the region’s largest employers.

Britain’s business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, and Unite general secretary Sharon Graham are scheduled to meet with JLR chief executive PB Balaji next week, after a weekend of intensive talks to mitigate the job losses, Graham told the BBC.

JLR’s profit before tax fell to £14m from £2.5bn the prior year, according to the company’s annual report published in May. The cyber-attack that halted production for several weeks last year was one of several factors contributing to the profit decline, alongside US tariffs that disrupted exports to the American market.

The cyber-attack led to a 27% drop in overall output and cost the company about £200m. Separately, US President Donald Trump raised tariffs on imported vehicles to 25% before agreeing a deal setting the UK rate at 10%. The tariffs contributed to drops of about 70,000 in JLR’s retail volumes and 90,000 in wholesale volumes, as the company attempted to push more luxury cars into the American market.

“These challenges arrived with the global automotive industry already under continued pressure from cost inflation, slower-than-expected uptake of electric vehicles, and the deterioration of market conditions in China,” Balaji said in the annual report.

Under the previous Labour government led by Keir Starmer, the UK underwrote a £1.5bn loan guarantee to JLR after the cyber-attack forced it to halt production. Prime Minister Andy Burnham has pledged to “safeguard sovereign manufacturing” and reindustrialise Britain.

JLR launched its first electric Range Rover this week, at a starting price of £154,070, a step the company has described as an effort to appeal to climate-conscious buyers of luxury SUVs.