Atkins has announced that it is to cut 280 jobs in its UK infrastructure division as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Part of the Canadian-headquartered SNC- Lavalin group, Atkins is the first major consultancy in the UK to announce redundancies during the coronavirus crisis.

A statement issued by the company says:

“The impact of COVID-19 on the global aviation and real estate markets has created unprecedented uncertainty and project delays.

“As a result, we have seen a significant reduction in workload in specific areas of our UK Infrastructure business and we do not expect these markets to fully recover in the short to medium term.

“Given these challenging circumstances, and after careful consideration, we have taken the difficult decision to make a number of roles redundant across these parts of our UK Infrastructure division.”