Plans for a possible new centralised subbing hub in the Midlands have been shelved following negative feedback from staff.

Johnston Press began consulting last month with sub-editing staff at its weekly titles in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire about the possibility of creating the hub in Chesterfield, home of the Derbyshire Times, although no jobs were under threat of redundancy.

Workers have told HTFP that, due to "massive opposition" from staff, JP has now scrapped the plans, although other insiders have claimed the proposal has been put on hold due to the forthcoming introduction of a new editorial content management system.

One employee, who asked not to be named, said: "The whole process seemed to be going on for ages and we were expecting to be told who would be moving into the hub.

"But then out of the blue we were informed that it was all off and everyone would be staying where they were for the time being because of the negative feedback they'd had from staff."

Another staffer told HTFP that the decision to scrap the Chesterfield subbing hub was because of the pending introduction of the Atex system at the Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire titles.

Titles that would have been affected by the plan included the Mansfield Chad series, Hucknall Despatch, Buxton Advertiser and Ilkeston Advertiser.

JP has created several centralised subbing operations over the past year and earlier this month it revealed that three of the Midlands hubs were themselves to be centralised into one at Peterborough, costing over 40 jobs.

The company has introduced a new Atex content management system in some of its Midlands centres meaning that reporters can write copy straight onto template news pages.

As a result, there have been scores of redundancies among the company's sub-editing staff with the new system due to be in place at every UK Johnston Press title by the end of 2010.

Johnston Press had not responded to a request for comment at the time of publication.

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