A furniture manufacturer has made 59 of its staff redundant.

Bevan Funnell in Newhaven said it had been forced to cut back on its workforce because of a downturn in the market.

Staff were told in December there would be job losses and the latest round was made last week.

Managing director Jane Miller said the company had been making losses and executive directors came in to draw up a recovery programme.

She said: "Part of this recovery programme was redundancies and the reason for that was because we were significantly overmanned for our output.

"If we hadn't done anything within the company, the company would not be here now.

"There are no more redundancies planned at the moment but I can't promise there won't be any more."

Bevan Funnell, which employs 80 people at Newhaven, was bought out in January by The Swan Group.