Published: October 30, 2007
Exclusive: Highbridge's Woodberry and Haines announces job losses

One of Burnham-On-Sea and Highbridge's biggest employers is to lay off more than a dozen staff.

Furniture maker Woodberry Brothers and Haines is this week laying off 14 staff and dropping its kitchen furniture range.

Company director Mark Woodberry confirmed the news to Burnham-On-Sea.com on Tuesday morning (October 30th), saying: "We've been running the kitchen furniture side of the business for 17 years, but it has never really blossomed."

"We've therefore made the difficult decision to refocus our work by concentrating on our core markets and dropping the kitchen brand."

Mr Woodberry said the number of job losses had been cut to a bare minimum following "lengthy discussions" with unions.

"The number of redundancies has been reduced substantially from the 45 orginally planned."

"We've managed to reduce the job cuts to 14 and several other staff have voluntarily left."

He added: "We've been through extensive consultation with unions and employee representatives."

Mr Woodberry said the decision to axe the jobs had been a very difficult one.

"It's unfortunate - making redundancies is not something that any business likes to do. It's very sad, but this is crucial to our business going forward," he said.