Jaguar Land Rover is to cut as many as 4,000 jobs over two years as it targets about £1.7bn of savings, and the government has said it will not step in with a bailout.
Business secretary Jonathan Reynolds said he had already spoken to PB Balaji, JLR’s chief executive, and would meet the company’s leadership team and Sharon Graham, general secretary of the Unite union, for talks on Tuesday.
JLR is expected to confirm its redundancy programme today after The Sunday Times revealed the scale of the cuts. The carmaker confirmed it was opening a voluntary redundancy programme offering staff, including members of the management team, the opportunity to leave the business.
A JLR spokesperson said: “As we deliver the next phase of our strategy, we need to adapt to evolving global market conditions while targeting approximately £1.7 billion of savings over the next two years … To achieve this, we must further simplify our organisation, improve efficiency and build greater resilience.”
Asked by the BBC whether the government might offer financial support to JLR, Reynolds said: “Not if it’s to bail people out. If it’s about long-term investment in the future, we do invest alongside industry on that.”
Speaking on Laura Kuenssberg’s Sunday morning BBC programme, he described JLR as “a huge British success story”. He said a company of its size would change the number of people it employs at times in its business cycle “if this is about making sure over time that the workforce is right to make the business as competitive as possible”. He added: “Of course, you want to mitigate any job losses.”
Reynolds also told LBC radio that imposing tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles would not be a sensible move. “The crucial thing, not just for Jaguar Land Rover but for all of our automotive sector, is we are an export-led industry,” he said. “If you put tariffs on foreign products coming into the UK, you obviously risk your position relative to that country.” He added that “Jaguar Land Rover sells a lot to China”.
A government spokesperson said: “We understand that this will be an uncertain and concerning time for affected workers, their families and wider communities.”
The spokesperson said the government had taken action to back the UK automotive industry by lowering electricity bills for manufacturers, providing £4bn of capital and research and development funding to manufacture zero-emission vehicles and launching a £2bn electric car grant to encourage people to buy them.
JLR employs more than 30,000 people in Britain across three sites in the West Midlands and one on Merseyside. Balaji is under pressure from Tata Motors, JLR’s Indian owner, to cut costs after a sales downturn led to a drop in profits.
The company, like other manufacturers, faces competition from lower-priced Chinese electric vehicles and the effect of President Trump’s 10 per cent tariffs on cars imported into the United States. America is JLR’s biggest market, accounting for 29 per cent of its sales. The tariffs were cited when JLR moved to cut 500 UK management jobs in 2025.
JLR was also hit by a cyberattack last year that halted production for five weeks and was later assessed at a cost of £1.9bn by the Cyber Monitoring Centre.
Graham, Unite’s general secretary, said: “Death by a thousand cuts has been going on under the nose of successive governments. Years of underinvestment, unsustainable zero-emission mandates and high industrial energy costs are crippling the industry. There must be further action.”
The government’s electricity support for manufacturers, the British Industrial Competitiveness Scheme, exempts eligible energy-intensive firms from three levies on their bills, with the discount due to take effect from April 2027 and backdated to April 2026.
