A TELEPHONE headset manufacturer says its redundancy programme will be smaller than originally planned.

Last November GN Netcom, of Washington, Tyne and Wear, announced that about 109 workers would lose their jobs.

The firm, whose products are used in call centres, was moving manufacturing to China and concentrating on final assembly and distribution.

But it says there will now be fewer redundancies in the three-phase programme.

Human resources manager Gillian Laight said the first phase of 38 losses had been reduced to 29, and only one was compulsory. Future phases were likely to be smaller than planned.

"Although work is going out, we are moving quite a lot of work in," she said. "We have been moving warehousing and distribution in here and it is saving jobs.

"The group has acquired another two companies which has created additional work.''