MORE jobs are being axed by a leading housing group in Cumbria.

Riverside has been under fire for closing its popular Careline operation and 22 jobs.

Careline helps around 4,000 elderly and vulnerable people across the north of the county but it closes on Monday.

Now it has been confirmed that 11 workers are leaving in a shake-up of its maintenance team.

With two further redundancies from other operational areas, it takes the number of jobs being lost to 35.

The number of people working out of Riverside’s Botchergate office in Carlisle has been cut from 223 to 205 as 18 employees have been redeployed.

The latest posts to go are from Riverside’s 96-strong maintenance team as it overhauls its repairs service in Cumbria.

Riverside is blaming the Government’s move to cut rents on its need to find multi-million pound savings.

Riverside, which has its HQ in Liverpool, manages 6,003 properties and two retirement living schemes in Cumbria.

They are largely in Carlisle and the surrounding areas including Penrith.

It is also building another 21 affordable homes for rent.

Nationally it has around 55,000 homes.

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A spokeswoman for organisation said: “As a housing association, Riverside has been significantly affected by the changes made by the Government in the Comprehensive Spending Review to reduce rents by one percent for the next four years.

“Riverside needs to find savings of £7.5m in 2016/17, increasing to £30m by 2019/20.

“We are being forced to make tough decisions about all our services.

“As a result we making some redundancies in our maintenance team. In all we are losing 11 members employees, five painters/decorators and six managers. Collective consultation has been completed through the trade union.”

As part of the changes, new ‘property MOTs’ are being introduced.

The new scheme aims to cut down Riverside’s need to respond to emergency or ad-hoc repairs requested by tenants.

The housing group say the scheme has proven popular with its tenants in other parts of the country.

It has also helped save money because Riverside says that, by carrying out regular inspections on homes, potential issues are identified and tackled earlier and avoids the need for staff to visit numerous times to fix different problems when they arise.

The spokeswoman added: “Customers will not see any deterioration in our repairs service.

“We are adopting a more proactive approach to improving our properties and so reducing the number of repair call outs from our customers.”

The latest jobs blow comes as Careline closes on Monday.

Riverside will continue to run its monitoring service for residents through Helpline, its own specialised call centre in Liverpool.

It will also run an interim emergency response service for its existing vulnerable and elderly residents who rely on the scheme until a new body takes over on June 1.

Four existing Careline workers will be running the interim service until June while five more are having trials for posts in Riverside’s newly created Carlisle customer service centre.

The Eden Independent Living (EIL) service from Eden Housing Association already operates a 24-hour emergency response service.

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It is extending its geographical coverage from June to fill the gap left by Careline’s closure.

Riverside and the EIL team are working together to ensure that affected residents continue to receive support over the next three months.

Eden Housing Association also says it will be looking to recruit new workers as it extends its team.

Carlisle care company Artemis has also confirmed that it is in the running to provide a similar service that helps elderly people stay in their own homes.