About 1,000 workers at Jaguar's Castle Bromwich plant in Birmingham will move from a five-day to a three-day week from October until Christmas.

Jaguar Land Rover said it was making "temporary adjustments to our production schedules" at the factory.

It was standard practice to "regularly review its production schedules to ensure market demand is balanced globally", JLR added.

It affects about half the plant's 2,000 workers, who will remain on full pay.

The move means production of Jaguar cars will slow - many of which have diesel engines. Diesel sales have sunk as buyers question their environmental impact.

Jack Dromey, the Labour MP for Erdington, blamed "Brexit chaos and the mishandling by ministers of the transition from diesel" for the three-day week.

He told the BBC the government had sent "the message that somehow if you buy a diesel car, they'll be worthless, in circumstances where actually the new generation diesels are ultra low emission produced by the company. So there's been a real problem there."

Despite the "continuing headwinds" affecting the car industry, JLR said it was committed to its UK plants, "in which we have invested more than £4bn since 2010 to future-proof manufacturing technologies to deliver new models".

As well as Castle Bromwich, JLR also has plants in Halewood and Solihull.

 

source: BBC News