North East Job Centres have been warned to expect an influx of job seekers due to the local downturn within the oil and gas industry, it is expected as many as 5,000 new job seekers may apply for benefits due to the decline in oil price

Alan Kane, Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) north of Scotland operations manager, said they have received over 2,500 claims for jobseekers’ allowance from February to April this year – a rise of over 1,900 in the same period for 2014.

Mr Kane commented that: “We were notified of the potential for more than 5,000 redundancies in January, predominantly from the oil and gas sectors in the North-east.

“Unfortunately I think there will still be more job losses to come and, although we’re still in an encouraging position overall, there is no doubt the North-east has been affected by the oil and gas downturn.”

Mr Kane said he believes more job losses are still to come, however, overall employment rates are still encouraging, he added:

“Aberdeen and the North-east still has better employment rates than elsewhere in Scotland and the UK, but the impact of the downturn is clear.”

The current impact of low oil prices is still continuing to effect the local oil industry with Subsea 7 announcing earlier this week a reduction of staffing and fleet numbers, as well as Global Energy Group warning of a possible redundancies within it's Ross-shire-based company Isleburn.

Mergers and acquisitions have played a vital role in job security for the local industry as can be seen by James Fisher's purchase of X-Subsea after it announced the closing of its global operations.

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