THE chief executive of the Immigration and Passport Service yesterday said she had listened to Argus readers opposed to the closure of the Newport office.

Yesterday immigration minister Damian Green announced that 150 posts would be kept at the Newport branch – down from 300 who worked there when the government announced it wanted to shut it in October.

However remaining staff will still need to reapply for their jobs with the overall headcount to be reduced by 120, with postal and online application processing at the centre to end.

A further 30 staff have taken voluntary redundancy.

But Identitiy and Passport Service chief executive Sarah Rapson said the decision came as a direct result of feedback from its consultation into the proposals, which ended in March.

Local politicians, the Public and Commercial Services union and the Argus all campaigning against the closure, while the Argus collected more than 26,000 signatures against the move.

“We listened very hard to all of the responses, we got a lot of good feedback from our staff,” said Ms Rapson.

“[The decision] is a direct result of the input from the consultation and the fact we have been able to run a voluntary exit scheme through the period.”

She added: “The consultation with a true consultation and there were many contributors to that, including the South Wales Argus petition. We listened very hard to all of that.”

A total of 170 people took voluntary redundancy in IPS as a whole since autumn 2010.

Under the new plan for the Newport passport office, 50 people will work in the office’s customer service centre.

The rest will work in a central customer complaints and correspondence service, a telephone enquiry department shared with a regional office in Durham and a specialist anti-fraud team.

For those who cannot be found jobs at the passport office, IPS would work with other government departments and the private sector to find out what other work might be available, Ms Rapson said.

If alternatives cannot be found staff will leave IPS at the end of the year, Ms Rapson said. Training and support will be offered to the 120 affected.

The current Olympia House building on Upper Dock Street will cease to be used by IPS in 2013, she said, adding that the service is committed to remaining in Newport.

She added: “If there’s a good property in the middle of the city that will be a preference, but we will look at the options available nearer the time.”

Customers should not notice any difference between the new and old services, she said, with IPS still providing a same day service in Newport.

Home office minister Damian Green said he appreciated it will be a “difficult time for staff in our Newport office, but we have sought to reduce the impact of these difficult decisions as much as possible while making the savings and efficencies we need.”