500 jobs coming to Manchester as part of Virgin Media reorganisation

Virgin Media has announced it is moving 500 jobs to its call centre on the outskirts of Manchester.

The telephone and broadband provider has launched a major reorganisation of its business which will result in the loss of 800 jobs.

The company which currently operates from more than 100 locations said its eight customer service centres are being reduced to four.

The biggest job losses will be at its call centre in Swansea, where 800 people currently work.

As part of the reorganisation the firm’s sites in Wythenshawe, Sheffield, Birmingham and Stockton will become the focus for its future customer operations.

The firm, which has 14,000 employees said 470 customer, operations roles are being moved to its Wythenshawe site.

The Swansea site will shut down by the autumn of next year as part of a scheme to invest in existing sites and acquire new ones.

Chief executive Tom Mockridge said Virgin Media would be investing £40m in property over the next three years.

He said: “Last year Virgin Media began a three year property investment programme to create fewer, higher quality work places to better support our people, our business and growing customer base.

“As a result we plan to invest an additional £40 million over the next three years to refurbish key sites and acquire new alternative sites. As part of this we intend to create four regional customer operations hubs while increasing the flexibility of our customer services resources.

“As a consequence, we have proposed the customer operations roles currently based at our Swansea site will transfer to either one of our partners or to a soon to be refurbished site at Wythenshawe near Manchester.

“The majority of the remaining roles will relocate to alternative sites across the UK. This means that our site in Swansea will close by the autumn of 2019.

“We are now working with and supporting all employees who have been asked to relocate, who may be in a role at risk of redundancy or who may wish to take another role with Virgin Media or one of our partners.”

The firm’s Knowsley, Baguley and Preston centres will become technical sites, with the majority of roles based there relocating to Wythenshawe.

The centre in Wythenshawe will deal with customer service, collections and complaint handling staff, as well as social media customer support, business sales and field operations teams.