Journalists at Express Newspapers have urged owner Richard Desmond to halt cuts which will see the businesss team reduced to one, TV pages completely outsourced and regionalised sport pages stopped.

Express Newspapers is currently seeking to cut 200 editorial jobs reducing total headcount (full and part-time) to 450.

Press Gazette understands that the voluntary redundancy total is still short of 100 and that management now wants to proceed with compulsory job cuts.