A group of 22 workers have been made redundant from one of Otley's biggest employers.

The job losses took place last week at Garnett's paper mill, which gave notice it would be making redundancies more than 90 days ago.

Some of the former employees will have to wait up to six months before receiving all of their redundancy pay, due to what the company says are "cashflow problems".

One man who had worked for Garnett's for several decades - and did not want to be named - said: "A lot of those who are going have been there 30 or 35 years.

"They say they're going to spread the redundancy payment over up to six months but that's something we've referred to manufacturing union Amicus, who say they've never come across that before but are looking into it."

Those claims are now being examined by Amicus, but are all stringently denied by Garnett's managing director Cliff Barry.

Mr Barry points out that more than half of those who have lost their jobs volunteered for redundancy, and says the company did everything it could to keep the number as low as possible. This included re-deployment of employees in other places of work in the company.

He also stresses that Garnett's publicly announced back in the summer that redundancies would follow from its decision to transfer production overseas. The company said an increase in charges for water, including a seven-fold rise in Yorkshire Water's effluent fees, were exclusively responsible.

And he said care had been taken to ensure nobody's monthly redundancy payment was less than their average monthly salary would have been.