Lloyds Bank to cut 625 jobs

LLOYDS BANK has confirmed today that it is cutting 625 jobs across its UK operations.

21 branches overall will be cut during July 2016 as part of this strategy, including branches in Leeds, Halifax London, Brighton, Gloucester, and Wolverhampton.

They are part of 9,000 job cuts that were announced in October 2014 as part of a cost-cutting strategy. Roles across group operations, risk, group finance and group strategy face the axe.

Lloyds said that 195 jobs would be ‘created’ in those divisions to make up for cuts.

The union Unite said that this would include offshoring of roles to India in a “dangerous race to the bottom” as 82 roles in IT are offshored.

A spokesperson for Lloyds said: “Lloyds Banking Group is committed to working through these changes with employees in a careful and sensitive way.

“All affected employees have been briefed by their line manager today. Accord and Unite were consulted prior to this announcement and will continue to be consulted.

“Where it is necessary for employees to leave the company, it will look to achieve this by offering voluntary redundancy. Compulsory redundancies will always be a last resort.”

John Morgan-Evans, Unite regional officer, said: “It is alarming that Lloyds are continuing to offshore IT roles in the name of driving down cost.

“Unite has made it clear that ‘efficiency’ cannot simply mean axing more jobs while expecting the same work to fall on fewer shoulders.

“The bank forgets that these relentless cuts have a human cost. Unpaid overtime and work-related stress are already at endemic levels across the bank and this will reach a crisis point if Lloyds continue to swing the axe.”

There has been  a raft of redundancies at high street banks this month, starting with Yorkshire Bank which announced the closure of nine branches in the region as they sought to “balance investment.”

Last week, NatWest, the RBS brand also announced 200 job cuts with the closure of 18 Northern branches. A total of more than 600 jobs were made redundant.

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