by Sunny Hundal

Earlier this week a group of 35 business executives wrote to the Daily Telegraph saying the Chancellor George Osborne was right to introduce drastic measures to to cut the deficit.

One of the signatories was Philip Dilley, Chairman of Arup.

We pointed out that Mr Dilley recently joined the PM’s Business Advisory Group, and was thus close to the government.

We can now show that an internal by the company’s COO contradicts the optimism showed in the letter by Arup’s Chairman.

The email, leaked to Liberal Conspiracy, is from the company’s John Turzynski, pointing out why the company needed to make redundancies.

A key paragraph in the letter to the Telegraph said:

The private sector should be more than capable of generating additional jobs to replace those lost in the public sector, and the redeployment of people to more productive activities will improve economic performance, so generating more employment opportunities.

This is in fact central to the argument put forward by Osborne and his supporters.

But in fact the internal email sent by Arup’s CEO shows no such sign of confidence. The email says that the company does not see any good news on the horizon.

The email says that the trend was for “continuing decline” across many businesses, and that private sector projects “are not yet replacing” public sector reductions.

Read the leaked internal email

From: UK Consultation

Sent: 06 September 2010 16:46

To: UK Consultation

Subject: Message to UK Staff from the UK-MEA Region Board Against the backdrop of a continuing slowdown in workload across many parts of our UK business, it is with regret that we will need to start a programme of staff reductions, beginning on 6 September 2010. Our provisional estimate is that there could be a reduction of up to 600 permanent roles across all parts of the business, in all UK offices (of the UK-MEA Region). This is not an easy time for any of us, and with the anticipated improvement in our sector of the UK economy failing to materialise, these further redundancies have become inevitable. We will conduct the consultation in as transparent a way as possible, and we have had an initial meeting with Airtime representatives (please see a link to the Airtime intranet site below). Briefing sessions with your Group Leader will also take place, providing you with the opportunity to ask any immediate questions you might have. We will be regularly updating the intranet with details of the consultation progress. I am personally convinced that although this is painful, it is a necessary action for the UK part of the firm, and that despite the last 18 months of staff reductions and all of our focus on winning new work, we cannot avoid taking this decision now. John Turzynski,

Chief Operating Officer, Arup UK-MEA ————-

Why do we need to do this?

The UK economy is only slowly recovering from the affects of recession. The Government is reducing public expenditure and has signalled major cuts in the October Comprehensive Spending Review. Cuts have already been felt, for instance in the Building Schools for the Future programme. Private sector projects are not yet replacing public sector reductions. The Board and the Region leadership have been monitoring our forward workload carefully over many months. The trend shows a continuing decline across many parts of the business, which is set to continue.

[SNIP]

Arup is making 600 redundancies to staff across the UK. This blog post by Osama Saeed outlines how many of the companies who signed the letter have made similar redundancies.