Energy company confirms thousands of job cuts after £99m loss

ENERGY group Npower, which has two sites in Leeds, has revealed that it is to make 2,400 job cuts over the next two years after making a full-year loss of £99m.

The company said 26 sites will be closed and three regional hubs set up, with North East, Midlands and Yorkshire sites worst affected.

The Big Six provider has been affected by the falling oil and gas prices, and last month it announced a 5.2 per cent cut in its gas price.

Npower, which is part of German energy giant RWE, was also hit by a £26m payout in December for poor complaint handling and inaccurate bills.

Npower says it will make “extensive cost savings” to help turn around the losses made in 2015 and return the company to profitability.

This will be achieved by streamlining activities across the company, eliminating process failures in its customer service and billing systems, and rationalising the number of systems it uses.

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A statement read: “This will both improve the efficiency of its day to day operations and eliminate the cost of re-work.”

Npower has hinted that the job cuts will be a mixture of full-time staff and contractors.

Paul Coffey, CEO, RWE Npower, said: “Npower results continue the trend seen earlier in 2015, but they are nonetheless extremely disappointing and we are starting a two year process to fix them. They show a business that tried to do too much, too soon while not focusing enough on the fundamentals in a constantly changing market. This led to over complicated processes and procedures resulting in unhappy customers, too many complaints and extra costs to put things right.

“These issues are not insurmountable. Over the past few months, we have looked at every part of Npower, and over the next two years we’re fundamentally changing how the company operates. We shared the outcome of this review yesterday with employees. By 2018, around 2,400 fewer people will support Npower overall through a mix of those who work directly and indirectly for Npower.”