300 more jobs to go at Lloyds Bank

Unite expressed anger at the latest news, saying it will hit an office in Bridgend, South Wales, which is to close.

National officer David Fleming said: “This decision will devastate the local workforce in Bridgend.

“When the Bridgend site opened, there was a significant commitment to the community and the bank secured a grant to this end.

“This withdrawal smacks of hypocrisy and makes a mockery of the statements made by the new chief executive to support the bank’s communities and customers.

“Unite is working with the bank to maximise redeployment opportunities to Cardiff, Newport, and Swansea for the Bridgend staff, but this will in no way deflect the pain of those who have today been told that their workplace is closing down.”

A total of 27,500 jobs have been cut since the Lloyds Group was formed in January 2009.

Lloyds said the 300 jobs would be lost in its retail, wholesale, wealth and international and group operations divisions as part of its ongoing restructuring programme.

“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.

“The group’s policy is always to use natural turnover and to redeploy people wherever possible to retain their expertise and knowledge within the group.

“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. In fact, during 2009 and 2010, slightly less than half of the role reductions made as part of integration have led to people leaving the group through redundancy.”

The company added that the Bridgend contact centre will close by the end of March 2012.