AFM Consulting, part of Amey Group, made the redundancies six weeks ago as part of a restructure intended to remove duplication in its Hertford and Wembley offices.
The two offices, which account for 85% of AFM's work, carry out a range of services for Hertfordshire County Council and Brent Unitary Authority, including architecture, FM, estate agency, surveying and repair.
Amey has decided to put a single management team in place for both contracts. As a result, 30 of the Hertfordshire office's 120 staff have gone and four have been released from the 66-strong Wembley office.
Mike Pilbeam, managing director of business process outsourcing for Amey, said the move would benefit the local authority clients.
"One benefit we can bring clients is to centralise our operations while making sure we maintain a local presence," he said.
He also defended the decision to bundle the businesses: "Look at our property work with Centrica – we operate in 60 different locations in the UK from one centre. This makes perfect sense." Pilbeam said most of the redundancies were made voluntarily but that "four, five or six" would be compulsory. "I am being slightly vague because some of the redundancies are still not resolved," he said.
One benefit we can bring clients is to centralise operations while maintaining a local presence
Mike Pilbeam, Amey
A number of other staff that would have been made redundant have been redeployed to contracts with the London Borough of Ealing and telecommunications firm Global Crossing.
Public sector union Unison is believed to be in dispute with Amey over the redundancies. Officials were unavailable for comment.
The move was made just weeks after AFM won a second contract from Brent in May. The Hertford contract was won in 1997.
Both contracts were transferred from the councils under the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) regime.
Many staff taking voluntary redundancy will be subject to local authority terms; others who opted for Amey's terms and conditions will get a different package.
