ALMOST 100 North-East mobile phone workers, nearly half of them in the Tees Valley, are facing an uncertain future after Everything Everywhere announced plans to slash more jobs and potentially offshore others to an Indian firm.

The firm, formed by the merger of Orange and T-Mobile last year, has started consultations over 90 possible job losses spread between its offices at Darlington, Doxford Park in Sunderland, North Tyneside and Greenock in Scotland.

The new job losses in the North-East are part of plans to cut 550 jobs across the UK and it is understood that up to 40 of the proposed cuts could come at the Darlington site alone.

That would take the number of roles cut at the Yarm Road facility, which employs 2,350, to more than 180 since the merger.

It is unclear how many of the further 50 redundancies could hit each of the other two North-East facilities, employing around 3,500 people between them.

The firm also admitted last night that some of the roles under threat in the North-East could be outsourced to Bangalore based Infosys.

A spokeswoman said: "Following a review of its business, Everything Everywhere has announced proposed organisational changes to support the company as it transitions from integrating two businesses to a new phase.

"As a result of the proposed new structure, regrettably, approximately 550 head office and support roles will leave the organisation over the coming months.

"The proposed reductions will come mainly from the head office functions and will not impact customer-facing teams.

"Everything Everywhere has now entered into a consultation phase, starting November 1, on our proposals, which will last 90 days to completion."

Orange's merger with T-Mobile last year led to 1,200 jobs being axed across the country as the company attempted to remove duplications within the business.

Everything Everywhere's chief executive Olaf Swantee immediately set about delivering £3bn in savings on taking the reins in August, slashing his senior team from 26 to ten within days of his appointment.

The last two job culls at Everything Everywhere's Darlington facility have been dogged by controversy.

After it was announced in October last year that between 100 and 120 jobs were to go at Yarm Road as part of the national cuts, Darlington MP Jenny Chapman said she had been misled over the extent of job losses.

The firm was also forced to deny it had used a "traffic light" system to tell staff they were at risk of redundancy after using colour coding to indicate proposed changes.

In April this year the firm had to apologise for suggesting some of 40 night-time customer service staff, whose jobs were being outsourced to the Philippines, should consider moving 7,000 miles to Manila.

The company blamed a "HR error."