Sirius responds to concerns over company's recruitment policy

It comes after claims that up to 50 workers from Romania have been employed to work at Woodsmith mine since August last year.

External Affairs Manager Matt Parsons said: “Providing local employment is hugely important to us, which is why we have committed to a target of 80% local employment once we’re fully operational.

“During construction our target was 35% because we understand that specialist contractors that work at the mine want to bring their own people, but actually of the 900 people that work for us at the moment, 66% of them are local and about 200 come from the Scarborough borough so we’ve already gone beyond our initial target.

“Ultimately we look to get the best people for the job but we make every effort to advertise vacancies on our website and to encourage locals to apply.”

He added that Sirius hold regular job fairs and that the company is investing in apprenticeships and training programmes for adults with transferrable skills.