DOZENS of jobs may be under threat in the North-East after a Government agency revealed cost-cutting plans.

The Land Registry yesterday announced consultation on a programme which would see the closure of five offices around the country and the loss of 1,500 jobs.

Offices in Peterborough, Portsmouth, Croydon, Stevenage and Tunbridge Wells have been earmarked for closure, shedding 1,100 jobs in a programme aimed at saving about £90m a year.

The plans would see a further 400 jobs going – spread across the agency’s remaining 19 sites – through privatisation, potentially including the agency’s office in Durham City, where just under 550 staff are based.

The Land Registry’s office in York, where 42 staff are based, has already been earmarked for closure next year under a previously announced cost-cutting programme.

Although a final decision will not be made until next February, Land Registry chief executive Peter Collis said the five-year programme was intended to put the company “in the best possible position to deliver the services our customers demand”.

He said: “We believe these measures are necessary if we are to become the smaller, leaner, more flexible organisation we need to be.”

The company said it intended to embark on a programme of outsourcing some of its support functions, including the ten regional file stores, of which two are in County Durham.

Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union, said: “Staff are shocked and angry about these plans.

“With 1,700 jobs already gone, there is a real danger that services to the public will suffer as the agency is cut to the bone.

“Added to job cuts and office closures, staff have the double whammy of privatisation hanging over their heads.”

In 2006, the Land Registry announced plans to close its York office, then employing 130 staff, and transfer work to Humberside.

That announcement included plans to merge the two existing offices in Durham, with a combined workforce of 730, into one premises at Southfield House, in Southfield Way.

A spokesman for the Land Registry confirmed yesterday that the merger had been completed in March, a year ahead of schedule and that its Boldon House premises, in Wheatlands Way, had now been sold.