CARILLION today said it expects strong growth in its underlying earnings and profits, just days after it told its 1,000 North East staff they could lose their jobs.

The group took over green group Eaga earlier this year - now called Carillion Energy Services (CES) - which is headquartered in Newcastle and has 4,500 staff nationwide.

In today’s trading update to shareholders, support services giant Carillion said that integration of CES was “ahead of expectations and we continue to target strong returns from this acquisition”.

But jobs are under threat after the Government decided to half the subsidy for the supply of solar power to the National Grid by December 12.

Carillion said today: “We now propose to downsize our solar photo voltaic operations, following the Government's proposed changes to Feed-in-Tariffs, and to extend the restructuring of CES to deliver a substantial further improvement in overall operational efficiency.

“Total cost savings are now expected to increase from £15m per annum to £25m per annum by the end of 2013 and the one-off cost of delivering these savings is expected to increase to £40m, which includes a provision of up to £10m in respect of downsizing our solar photovoltaic operations.”