Amey workers made redundant from Sheffield Council's Streets Ahead contract

Amey refused to give any details about how many people had lost their jobs and Sheffield Council was unavailable for comment despite three requests for information.

An Amey spokesman said: “Following a strategic review of the Streets Ahead contract in August, we announced plans to reduce the size of our team through open consultation and voluntary redundancy.

“This was achieved in partnership with the unions and our client, ensuring a fair and transparent process throughout. The changes we have implemented will enable us to deliver an improved and more resilient service going forward.”

The Streets Ahead contract has more than 400 employees but Amey would not disclose how many people have been laid off, whether all the redundancies were voluntary or how this would impact on the contract.

A worker alerted the media to the jobs shedding. He said: “I finish on Friday working for Amey on highway repairs and other sections, I’ve been made redundant.”

In its autumn newsletter, Amey has a section titled “Celebrating our employees” which says: “With over 400 employees working on the Streets Ahead contract in Sheffield, we certainly have a variety of ages, skills and experience amongst us. We have celebrated who we are and what we do in many ways over the past 12 months.”

Streets Ahead is the largest highway investment contract ever seen in Sheffield, worth £2 billion. The citywide contract, which started in 2012, upgrades and maintaining roads, pavements, street lights, bridges and grass verges.

But it became mired in controversy after thousands of trees were chopped down. Only two months ago, the Local Government Ombudsman instructed the council to apologise to the people of Sheffield for the tree controversy.

It found the council did not, at times, act with openness and transparency when removing trees across Sheffield, and when dealing with people’s complaints about that work.

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