Oxfordshire-based software company Torex Retail is laying off developers, but insists the move is not connected to the ongoing investigation into the company and its financial woes.

Torex came unstuck when a trading update, which said everything was fine, was quickly followed by a profits warning last month. Shares in the firm are suspended while KPMG tries to make sense of the company's accounts. The Serious Fraud Office is investigating.

The redundancies will hit Torex's Lucas product, a Java-based point of sale system.

According to internal documents seen by The Register, the rollout of the product is almost complete, leaving the development team up for the chop. The document reveals that two staff will stay on to talk to customers and oversee some development of the product.

Customer support will stay in Sheffield. Graham Smith is taking over as product manager and will be in contact with all customers.

An anonymous source at Torex predicted 12 jobs would go.

Doug Hargrove, chief executive at Torex Retail, told us:

Torex Retail can confirm that a small number of people have been put at risk of redundancy.

It must be stressed that these redundancies are not related to the current corporate and financial issues relating to the company.

Lucas continues to be part of the Torex portfolio and the team has been restructured to focus on the ongoing support and development priorities of the Lucas UK customer base.

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