More UK manufacturers are to expand their workforces than are planning redundancies, as output is at its highest since the mid-1990s, a survey from the manufacturers’ organisation the Engineering Employers Federation (EEF) has found.

Bob Hale, chairman of RSM Robson Rhodes’ national manufacturing and technology group, which helped produce the survey, said: “Manufacturing employment will go below three million this year because of the need to offset rising costs by improving productivity. However, the survey suggested that the decline in manufacturing employment would be slower than we expected six months ago.”

The EEF said British manufacturing had been helped by the improvement in the economy in the rest of the European Union, which is its biggest export market.