School travel company to axe 670 jobs

Specialist school travel company PGL which has its headquarters in Herefordshire has announced 670 job losses, cutting its workforce by a quarter.

The jobs are set to be axed from several of its sites across the UK and its head office in Ross-on-Wye.

The company, which hosts children at residential activity centres across the UK, said the Covid-19 pandemic had adversely affected its business after being forced to cancel visits.

In a statement, the company said: “The Covid-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on our business and has resulted in 34 colleagues at our Ross-on-Wye head office being made redundant, representing 16% of our Ross-based workforce.

“As we conclude a further consultation process, a further 636 colleagues have been made redundant across the PGL Group, representing a 25% reduction in our total workforce; this includes colleagues based in our Blackpool and Hertfordshire offices and in our centre operations across the UK.”

PGL Travel reported pre-tax profits of £35m and revenues of £133m in its most recently-published accounts, for a 17-month period to August 2019.