500 North West jobs under threat from RBS cuts
AROUND 500 jobs at back office centres in Bolton and Liverpool are under threat after Royal Bank of Scotland announced plans to cut around 3,500 back office functions across the UK.
The bank is to close 12 regional offices, including a call centre at Ashton House employing 200 people in Bolton and a centre at Liverpool Wavertree that employs 300 people. A larger RBS processing site at Parklands in Bolton is unaffected by the announcement.
A spokesman for the bank said that not all of the staff working in the would be laid off.
He said the bank would shortly begin one-to-one consultation with affected staff and that many would be invited to apply to be redeployed to similar operations at other centres in Bolton, Liverpool and at Hardman Boulevard in Manchester’s Spinningfields district.
The bank has indicated that around a third of the cuts being made follow on from its sale of 318 bank branches to Santander. The sale was a forced disposal to comply with EU state aid rules following the UK government’s bail-out of the bank in October 2008, which led to the taxpayer taking an 84% stake in RBS.
The Bolton centre is scheduled to close in the third quarter of 2011 and the Liverpool Wavertree site will close in 2012.
“Having to cut jobs is the most difficult part of our work to rebuild RBS and repay taxpayers for their support,” said a spokesman. “We continue to make efficiencies across our business and adjust our plans in line with the divestments we have been required to make by the EU.
“We will do all we can to support our staff, offer redeployment opportunities wherever possible and keep compulsory redundancies to an absolute minimum.”
Unite the Union condemned the bank’s announcement yesterday, describing it as a “horror story”.
“It will be a specially bitter pill for staff to swallow as RBS has decided to move some of the jobs abroad to the Far East, India and America,” said the union’s national officer, Rob MacGregor.
“Just three weeks ago staff were boosted to hear of the £1.1 billion half year profit yet thousands of them are told that they have no future at the bank.
The union added that the bank had announced 21,500 job cuts since receiving government support.
“Staff across the country will be left reeling from this news. We continue to see a financial services sector which thinks the skills and expertise of it’s staff are a disposable asset.”
