Hundreds of people are set to lose their jobs as Thames Water announced it was cutting 300 job roles.

The water company revealed this morning it plans to cut retail and digital jobs as it faces debts of up to £14billion.

It covers Dartford as well as parts of Sevenoaks.

A Thames Water spokesman said: “The last year has been an extremely challenging year for the business and we continue to take a rigorous approach to financial discipline throughout the company in order to operate within budget.

“We need to make more difficult but necessary decisions to ensure we continue to deliver to our budgets. That’s why today we’ve announced a range of measures to reduce our costs further and become more efficient. This means we are consulting on a proposal which could lead to the potential loss of around 300 roles.

“We will seek to minimise compulsory redundancies wherever possible, through redeployment and voluntary redundancy.

“Front line colleagues will not be impacted by these proposed changes, with roles at risk primarily in our Retail and Digital functions as well as some other areas. Change does mean difficult decisions and we are focused on supporting our colleagues throughout the process.”

GMB Union national officer Gary Carter slammed the company, claiming “workers are paying the price”.

He said: “As a result, Thames is on it’s knees and water workers are losing their livelihoods. It’s abhorrent and systematic of the failed experiment that is water privatisation.

“GMB will fight to minimise any compulsory redundancies and make sure our members get every penny they are due.”