STAFF at Worcester’s npower office have a nervous wait to see if they will be affected by the energy giant’s plans to "consolidate" 26 of its UK sites into 10 over the next five years.

The firm, which employs more than 500 people at its retail head office in Warndon, said the programme would "significantly" reduce costs and allow it to bring teams together, enabling "quicker and more effective decision-making."

However, a spokesman for the company said it was too early to say if the city base was under threat as they were at the beginning of a full review of all their sites and no offices had been earmarked.

The plans were communicated to staff after the German-owned company reported a 3 per cent fall in half-yearly results, saying: "This is mainly due to the cost of delivering Government energy-efficiency schemes and increased network charges, as well as the cost of implementing new simplified tariffs for domestic customers.”

It added that RWE npower had already started to reduce management layers across the business, and improve customer service performance and satisfaction.

"As part of this ongoing review, RWE npower is also in discussions with external partners to explore whether other elements of its business could be better managed to help reduce costs and increase customer experience externally," it said.

Colin Smith of the GMB union said: "We are seeking further clarity from npower as to what this will mean for jobs and redeployments.

"GMB will be looking for assurances that any job losses will be mitigated and that there will be no compulsory redundancies and that npower will redeploy any employees who will be impacted by closures of these sites."