ONE of York's biggest employers has announced 119 job cuts leaving dozens of people in the city fearing for their livelihoods.

Norwich Union, which employs more than 3,000 people in the city, has announced the cuts in its human resources (HR) department.

The company currently employs 900 people in human resources departments across the country, about a quarter of which are based at its head office York. Staff there could have to wait until October to find out whether or not their jobs are safe.

Norwich Union spokeswoman Louise Salsby said it was impossible to know at this early stage how many of the roles affected would be in York.

She said: "There was an announcement on Monday about the next step of our HR review.

"It follows an announcement at the beginning of the year, when Patrick Snowball took over as executive chairman, that we are bringing our Norwich Union General Insurance and Life businesses together.

"As a result we want to make HR one function across both businesses. That will mean reducing the number of roles in our HR department by 119."

She added: "We have already identified 30 vacancies and a further 27 roles could be managed through natural turnover, which would mean 62 redundancies.

"There will be a selection process based on capability.

"Our main priority now is to keep staff fully informed about what is happening.

"It is still very early days at this stage and our priority is to look after our staff and keep the number of redundancies down as much as possible."

She said the selection process was expected to take at least two or three months.

A spokeswoman for the Amicus union, which represents some workers at Norwich Union, refused to comment on the job losses.

Earlier this month, The Press reported how 21 jobs at another of the city's largest employers could also be axed.

The jobs at CPP Group in York could be axed if a pilot scheme to move part of its business to Malaysia is successful.

Some data processing work is being carried out by a supplier, Vsource, in Malaysia in a six-week pilot.

Change of address, applications, cancellations, direct debits, policy amendments and registrations have been taken over by Vsource. If it proves successful, 21 of the 65 people currently working in the data processing department in York will be made redundant.

All those affected will be given the opportunity to apply for vacancies in other departments at the York headquarters.