Spending squeeze already taking toll on jobs across region

While sweeping new cuts are widely anticipated, local authorities have been under pressure from the Government to spend less money for some time, with increasing demands for council efficiency savings believed to have cost up to 5,000 jobs in Yorkshire last year.

Meanwhile, the knock-on effect of reduced Government spending has already hit scores of companies which were wholly reliant on public funds .

Jarvis, the York-based rail engineering firm went bankrupt earlier this year after public body Network Rail cut its track renewal programme by a third.

Bill Rawcliffe was among the 1,200 people who lost their jobs overnight.

"I've been working on the railways since I was 15 years old," said Mr Rawcliffe, who is now 53.

"It's devastating. We knew the company had financial problems, and we'd all been working full-pelt to achieve reductions in the workforce, which was itself a very painful process.

"Then I got up one morning and put the news on, and it was going across the bottom of the screen that they had gone into administration.

"There was no consultation, no redundancy payments, nothing. It was the day before pay day, and we never even got paid for the work we had done.

"There was a lad in my gang who had just had his first child and just got his first mortgage – he was paying 900 a month.

"I personally have now gone 10 weeks without receiving a thing – I haven't even had any jobseekers' allowance, because they haven't processed that yet. I'm absolutely incandescent."

Jarvis had, in truth, been struggling for some years but received the final hammer blow when Network Rail announced it was deferring a significant proportion of track renewal work to make major cost

savings.

It said a tough new funding settlement from the Office of Rail Regulation – directed by the Government – had required it to reduce its costs significantly.

Jarvis shares plummeted as soon as the Network Rail cutback programme was announced, and only a year or so later the famous company had disappeared altogether.