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Hundreds of jobs are understood to be under threat at a Plymouth call centre as bosses at troubled retailer John Lewis move the work in-house following a £26million loss.

US-headquartered contact centre giant Sitel only signed the deal with the department store chain in October 2018, immediately recruiting about 250 staff to work on the John Lewis contract at its huge Plymouth base. It is understood about another 200 workers joined them later.

But a year on and the retailer has said it is looking to shift the work to its own call centre and staff at the enormous The Ship building at Derriford, former home of the Western Morning News and The Herald newspapers, have been told about 300 workers will become surplus to requirements.

Sitel has not commented on the job cuts, but a spokesperson for John Lewis said: “We can confirm that we are reducing the scale of our operations in Plymouth. This is part of a wider strategy to strengthen the capacity of our in house contact centres in order to further support and serve our customers.”

It is understood an emergency meeting was held on Monday, October 21, 2019, where staff were told about the situation.

One employee said: "We have just been told that Sitel Plymouth will be making over 300 people redundant as John Lewis has decided to drop the Plymouth-based call centre.”

In September 2019 John Lewis and Partners announced a shock half-year loss - the first time it has been in the red.

The company, which owns the John Lewis department stores and Waitrose, reported an underlying pre-tax loss of £25.9million in the six months to July 27, after making a profit of £800,000 in the same period a year earlier.