300 Birmingham jobs to go with Lombard Vehicle Management closure
THE Royal Bank of Scotland is to close its Lombard Vehicle Management business with the loss of 397 jobs over the next two to three years. Some 295 of the jobs are at its main centre of operations at 7 Brindleyplace in central Birmingham.
Another 19 jobs are to go at nearby Kingswinford with the remaining 83 job losses spread around the country.
The bank has been trying to find a buyer for Lombard Vehicle Management – a fleet management company – for some time but with no success. Now it has decided to close the business down over a two or three year period.
Lombard Vehicle Management is part of the asset finance group Lombard which RBS owns. The bank is at pains to point out that the wider Lombard business is unaffected by this decision.
But Lombard Vehicle Management is now closed for new business and 98 staff will be affected immediately. They will enter a 90 day consultation period with the bank. RBS said it is hoping to deploy as many of the staff as possible elsewhere in the group but says it will listen to employees’ individual preferences which could include voluntary redundancy.
The remainder of the staff will be kept on to service existing business while the company is wound down. RBS/Lombard will continue to offer a fleet management service by outsourcing business to ALD Automotive.
An RBS spokesman said: “Having to cut jobs is the most difficult part of our work to rebuild RBS. The decision to close Lombard Vehicle Management was a difficult one but is a necessary step in our plan to de-risk and re-focus RBS, making the bank safer and stronger.
“We will do all we can to support our staff, offer redeployment opportunities wherever possible, and keep compulsory redundancies to an absolute minimum.”
RBS has taken the decision as part of its programme of disposing of non-core assets announced in 2009. This includes selling two batches of unsecured consumer loans to Solihull-based Paragon, one batch as recently as last month.
