Babcock has announced they will be cutting 250 jobs at Rosyth Dockyard.

The company responsible for building the Queen Elizabeth aircraft carriers made the announcement this morning (Tuesday).

Babcock will now go into a period of consultation with their workforce and will look for voluntarily redundancies and opportunities to redeploy employees to some of their other operations. 

The company said that, beyond the carriers programme, they will continue to employ more than 1,650 people in Rosyth. 

Informing Dunfermline and West Fife MP Douglas Chapman of their plans, Babcock said: "The nature of one-off, large scale programmes like this is such that companies like ours increase our workforce to cope with demand during the peak phases of the project.

"However, as these projects progress and the ships are completed, we must reshape the business accordingly to put us and our remaining employees in the most competitive position possible for future work and new challenges, which we firmly believe exist for Rosyth."

Mr Chapman MP said: "It's a crushing blow for affected staff, particularly at this time of year.  

"Only yesterday I asked the Secretary of State for Defence in parliament what reassurances he can give to workers at Rosyth following the departure of the carriers and if he would visit Rosyth. 

"Then less than 24 hours later this dreadful news is delivered to dockyard workers. It was perhaps ironic that these jobs were lost on the day that the UK Government launched their new UK Industrial Strategy.

"However, in reply to my question the Secretary of State said he was 'incredibly grateful for the amazing work' the Rosyth workforce have done on the carriers - but people in my constituency cannot live on a Tory minister’s platitudes. 

"They need follow-on contracts and this latest news underlines the importance of continuing the fight for Type31e frigates, fleet auxiliary ships and the carrier contracts to come to Rosyth. 

"In the meantime. I will be following up on yesterday’s Commons question and ask him to join me in Rosyth to tie down exactly what contracts can come to Rosyth so we do not lose any more of the skills, talent and dedication of the workforce here in West Fife.”