THE GOVERNMENT is to keep half of the staff at the Newport Passport Office on, a minister announced today.

Damian Green, immigration minister, said 150 staff will remain at the Upper Dock Street branch.

Of those, 50 will work in a customer service centre, while 100 will run a central Identity and Passport Service customer complaints and correspondence base.

It will also share telephone customer enquiries handling with the Durham office, while a specialist counter-fraud team will be retainted in Newport.

Newport will no longer process of postal and online applications – with 120 jobs to be lost as a result.

A total of 300 people were employed by the NPO when the announcement was made to close it entirely in October last year.

It is not clear where the remaining 30 posts have gone, and whether those people have taken voluntary redundancy.

The current premises in Newport will be retained until 2013. “After that, the size of the premises used for Newport will be reduced by 50 per cent,” Mr Green said.

Mr Green said the service was able to keep the extra 100 jobs at Newport after 170 people left IPS since Autumn 2010 on a voluntary basis.

He said this gave the service an opportunity to “consolidate some of its operational functions throughout the regional network.”