sounds like a reasonable analysis Frozenpilot, however doens't the law require a 'consultation period' even for a relatively generous voluntary redundancy scheme and then I'm pretty sure that you cannot recruit for a further 6 months after the redundancies. That means probably a minimum of 9 months from the start of a redundancy process before any new people can start, so although long term prospects may be ok, I'm not holding my breath for this year.