Just Eat has been forced to slash 1,700 delivery driver jobs and 170 head office roles, after the service has seen a slow down in takeaway demand.

The food delivery group, whose rivals include Deliveroo and Uber Eats, said the group was looking to improve efficiency and reduce costs.

Just Eat, which has some 15,000 employees globally, said that it will look to redeploy impacted head staff colleagues to other roles internally; delivery couriers have been given six weeks notice with pay.

As a result of the shakeup, Just Eat said that it was moving back to an entirely ‘gig worker’ model in Britain, meaning that it will no longer employ drivers directly and instead they will work on a freelance basis.

A Just Eat spokesperson said: “Just Eat UK is reorganising and simplifying its delivery operation as part of the ongoing goal of improving efficiency.

“As part of this process we have proposed to transition away from the worker model for couriers, which is a small part of our overall delivery operations – running in certain parts of six UK cities. There will be no impact to the service provided to partners and customers.

“Our  top priority now is to support impacted employees and couriers. We are hugely grateful to our talented colleagues and couriers who have been part of the worker model in the UK.”

It follows a move by rival Deliveroo who was also forced to slash 350 job roles across the UK and Ireland due to the economic downturn which is deterring customers from slashing out on takeaway.

The pair join a string of other companies which have been forced to cut job roles in an attempt to survive the challenging economic outlook.

This includes Facebook owner Meta, and Amazon who just yesterday announced it was looking to cut 9,000 job roles globally.