Lillyhall's closure-threatened tax office could be give a two-year stay of execution, a union has said.

Under current plans, the HM Revenues & Customs office is set to close by 2018 with the loss of more than 200 jobs as part of a Government plan to axe 137 local tax offices, including all those in the north west.

But the local branch of the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) says a proposal to keep the office open until at least 2020 to help ease the transition to regional tax offices is now under consideration.

The union hopes that if approved, the two-year extension to the Lillyhall centre’s life could open the door to staff there being trained for another public sector role.

Garry Humphrey, from the PCS in Workington, said: "There is now a review going on and the idea is to keep the Lillyhall office open as a transitional office while they move services over to the new regional offices.

"If they approve this plan Lillyhall would stay open until early 2020.

"There are around 200 jobs at the centre and they are all experienced staff.

"It would be great if we could secure those jobs for another two years.

"Obviously, it would be wonderful if HMRC would change their minds about the closure but I don’t think it’s likely.

"But there’s no reason why these workers cannot step into the role of processing the extension of universal credit."

Officials say the closures would be part of a 10-year modernisation programme to replace the local tax offices across the country with 13 regional hubs, employing thousands of people in quality jobs.

Nationally, HMRC wants to cut 58,000 full-time equivalent jobs to 51,000, saving £100m a year by 2025.

A HMRC spokesman said: "When we made the announcements in November we told staff in Lillyhall their office would stay open until at least 2018, but we were reviewing our options beyond then, and we would come back to them with more information in early 2016.

"We are continuing to review this and it remains our intention to update our staff as soon as we have more news."