The National Trust has confirmed it is to lose 1,200 staff to redundancy, as it looks to meet the financial fall out of the Covid-19 pandemic.

In July the charity launched a consultation over the proposed redundancies amid plans to make £100m annual savings, a fifth of its yearly spend.

During the consultation the charity received more than 14,500 responses from staff and volunteers.

Of the 1,296 redundancies, 514 are compulsory, “we’ve also accept 782 voluntary redundancies,” said the charity.

It added that a number of roles will be retained following the consultation. This includes in children’s education, curation, buildings maintenance and specialist roles for land use, soils and carbon reduction will be introduced.

“It’s with deep sadness that we have to make redundancies. I certainly don’t want to stop any of the extraordinary work done by the people of the National Trust,” said the charity’s director general Hilary McGrady.

“But our consultation has done as intended. It provided proposals to reach our savings target, and sparked such thorough feedback and collective intelligence, that we’ve been able to adapt our plans while still making the savings we needed. It’s been a difficult process with some very hard choices.

“I want to thank everyone who has been involved – especially those whose jobs have been affected and the members and volunteers who care so passionately about the Trust. They’ve really tested the ideas put forward, and helped shape our proposals so that we are in the best possible position to recover well.”

Last week the government announced £103m in funding to help heritage charities that maintaining historic sites to tackle the financial fall out of the Covid-19 health crisis.

The funding is from the government’s Culture Recovery Fund for Heritage and the Heritage Stimulus Fund, which is funded by government and managed by Historic England the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

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