Dentons set to cut up to 29 jobs in new redundancy round

Denton Wilde Sapte has launched its second redundancy round this year, with 29 support and secretarial positions at risk.

The top 50 firm announced the redundancy consultation today (13 October) with the bulk of the cuts expected to affect the London office, with the rest in Milton Keynes.

Twenty secretaries and nine support staff are included in the consultation.

In London, support staff working in departments including accounts, facilities, litigation support and marketing are at risk of redundancy, as are secretaries in departments including real estate, energy, infrastructure, disputes and employment and pensions.

The Milton Keynes cuts are expected to affect accounts and IT support staff as well as secretarial staff in the construction team. No fee earners will be affected.

The latest redundancy consultation, expected to be concluded by mid-November, comes after an earlier round of job cuts resulted in 76 staff leaving the firm - including 37 fee earners.

That process began at the beginning of January, with 80 staff initially at risk.

Dentons' results for 2008-09 showed the impact of the restructuring, with the firm reporting a 36% dip in profits per equity partner to £340,000 from £470,000. The firm said profits were impacted by the £3.5m cost of the headcount reduction.

Commenting on the redundancies, chief executive Howard Morris said: "This is not something that we wanted to do, but we can now see the way the year is shaping up and even though we shall be on budget for the year, or above, we will have sufficient capacity to meet any increase in activity levels. We have been careful to monitor activity levels and we have come to the decision that this is the right thing to do."

Denton Wilde Sapte on the Legal Week Wiki

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