Archant to move production of Ham and High plus 24 other titles to Norwich

Archant has revealed plans to move production of 25 weekly newspapers across London, Kent, Hertfordshire and Cambridge to a remote hub Norwich.

The proposal puts 24 production jobs across these Archant East titles at risk of redundancy, and the publisher said consultation will begin shortly with affected staff.

But it also said that 11 new jobs will be created – ten in Norwich and one in London.

Some staff will face a choice of taking redundancy or else moving up to around 150 miles away to Norwich.

Editorial page production for the 25 newspapers is currently carried out in Ilford, Ashford, Stevenage, St Albans, Welwyn and Huntingdon.

Under the new proposal, Archant said that editors and reporters will sub-edit copy before it is sent to Norwich for page design.

The proposal is “designed to improve efficiency and reduce production costs”, according to Archant East managing director Miller Hogg.

He said: “However, responsibility for all aspects of the content of the titles remains with newspaper editors and their news reporting teams who will continue to be locally based in existing offices.

“Sports reporting and production staff will also remain locally and are not affected by this proposal.”

The affected newspapers include the Ham and High, Kent on Sunday and Welwyn and Hatfield Times.

Archant's magazine and web production will not be affected.