Jaguar Land Rover cuts 4,000 UK jobs as suppliers warn of wider decline

JLR supply chain supports up to 180,000 jobs across West Midlands

Jaguar Land Rover confirmed on Monday that it will cut 4,000 jobs over two years, with chief executive PB Balaji saying the company aims to save £1.7bn through reductions that will principally affect head office, management and research staff. Balaji said the automotive industry “faces significant challenges, with technological change amid intense competition and ongoing geopolitical uncertainty.” The company said the cuts are expected to come largely through UK voluntary redundancies.

The decision has fueled concern among suppliers who depend on JLR for much of their revenue. David Roberts, chair of Coventry-based aluminium die-casting firm Evtec, said “everything is against us” in making cars in the UK. Evtec has helped bring together about 15 JLR suppliers employing 12,000 to 14,000 people and generating combined revenue of £2bn. Roberts warned that, without significant policy support, automotive demand will “contract inexorably over the next five years.” “Nobody knows the rate or speed of that decline, but decline it will, because everything is against us, everything, [when] making cars in the UK,” he said.

Oxford Economics has estimated JLR contributed £8.7bn to the West Midlands economy in 2024, equivalent to 4.7% of the regional economy, and a further £1.1bn to the north-west, where the company operates a plant at Halewood. Corin Crane, group chief executive of the Coventry and Warwickshire Chamber of Commerce, said 140,000 to 180,000 people are employed in supply-chain businesses connected to JLR. “When there’s problems with JLR, it’s a broader problem for the West Midlands as a whole,” Crane said.

The company’s struggle follows a cyberattack last year that paused production for four weeks, costing the manufacturer £200m, and contributed to JLR posting a pretax profit of just £14m, down from £2.5bn the year before. JLR scrambled to set up a help desk for its supply chain, which includes more than 700 companies making the 30,000 parts that can make up a luxury car.

Chancellor John Healey on Monday acknowledged it was a “worrying time” for JLR’s workers and suppliers, while Richard Parker, the mayor of the West Midlands, announced a £500,000 support package for affected staff. Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds, who has ruled out state support to protect the jobs, is to meet the company and the Unite union on Tuesday.

Steve Morley, president of the Confederation of British Metalforming, said the announcement of job cuts was not a surprise and criticised UK labour and energy costs as well as the government’s policies on electric vehicles. The industry has argued that the government’s EV sales targets are too onerous; the targets require automakers to reach 80% zero-emission car sales by 2030, leading to a ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars by 2035. Reynolds has refused to rule out watering down that target. “If we want to be competitive, we have to have infrastructure that lets us be competitive,” Morley said.

A Birmingham-based plastic manufacturer who has supplied JLR for decades said his workforce has been cut by about 75% because of challenges facing the sector. The owner, who was not identified, called on JLR to be more transparent with suppliers and the public. “We’ve got owners that do want to invest in taking us to the next level but they need the transparency, the visibility and confidence in future UK productions … to justify investment,” he said.

Roberts described JLR as the “kingpin” of the UK’s automotive industry and warned that the challenges facing the manufacturer had knock-on effects on suppliers and smaller carmakers including McLaren, Aston Martin, Bentley and Rolls-Royce. “There will come a point that the decline will be unstoppable and that will be the end of the motor industry as we currently know it,” he said. “We’ll just be a very small volume player.”

A government spokesperson said it understands that this will be an “uncertain and concerning time for affected workers, their families and wider communities.” Balaji said JLR was “committed to supporting everyone with care, fairness and respect” through the redundancy process.