HOPES are high that fewer than half of the 90 people threatened redundancies at aerospace engineers Hurel-Dubois in Burnley will lose their jobs.

A month ago, management at the French-owned company which employs more than 600 people at the Bancroft Road site warned redundancies were on the way.

Managing director Tom Hughes said then that they needed to cut costs because the industry was very cost competitive.

The redundancy threat stunned union officials. Amalgamated Engineering Union full-time official Mike Cooney said it was "crazy" as the company had taken on a similar number of people in the previous six to seven months.

Mr Cooney said today: "The situation there is really messy and we are having problems which could lead us into an official dispute situation.

"While I cannot go into details at this stage I can say that the numbers have been down drastically from the original figure of 90.

"But we take the view that given the circumstances there is no need for any redundancies at all.''

An undisclosed number of individual workers at the factory were officially told by the company that their jobs were at risk.

No-one at the factory was available for comment today.

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