Yorkshire Water to cut 400 more jobs
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Your support makes all the difference.YORKSHIRE Water is shedding another 400 jobs as part of a radical restructuring of its core water services business. The redundancies will reduce the number of staff in water services to 3,600, against the 6,500 it employed a decade ago.
Trevor Newton, managing director, said half of the staff made redundant would transfer to independent contractors that provide distribution and maintenance services for Yorkshire Water.
The remaining jobs being lost will be through voluntary redundancy and early retirement.
Yorkshire announced the cuts with results for the year to 31 March, showing a rise in pre-tax profits from pounds 138.6m to pounds 143.5m.
Non-core operations, encompassing environmental services such as solid waste management and disposal of clinical waste from hospitals, contributed pounds 4m profits.
The final dividend is 15.2p, lifting the total payout 7.3 per cent to 22.8p.
Shares rose 17p to 512p, which had more to do with optimism over better 'K' factors - the amount by which water companies can raise tariffs. The results included an unexpectedly high pounds 10m restructuring charge.
Yorkshire is allowed to increase its domestic tariffs by 1.9 per cent above inflation. Some analysts are expecting Ofwat, the industry regulator, to introduce a more generous 'K' factor of up to 4 per cent.
The average water bill for Yorkshire's residential customers this year will be pounds 193, about 50 per cent higher than it was when the company was privatised in 1989.
All new customers - about 13,000 a year - are put on a metered tariff system as opposed to the traditional method of charging according to rateable value of properties.
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