Yorkshire reels as RBS axes 3,500 jobs in nationwide cull

John Collingridge City Reporter

YORKSHIRE’S financial services industry was dealt another blow yesterday as Royal Bank of Scotland unveiled plans to axe more than 1,000 jobs in the region as part of a nationwide cull of 3,500 roles.

Offices in Harrogate, Leeds and Bradford will close over the next two years under plans to shrink its support and information technology (IT) operations.

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The biggest impact will be in Harrogate, where more than 500 jobs will go from the business which is one of the town’s biggest private employers. Nearly 300 jobs will go in Leeds and a similar number faces the axe in Bradford.

The move is part of the closure of 12 business support sites by the bank, but it hits Yorkshire the heaviest. Unions claimed the impact on staff would be worse because 500 jobs were heading abroad.

The region’s financial services sector has already seen the demise of Bradford & Bingley and repeated job losses from semi-nationalised Lloyds and RBS.

RBS, which is 83 per cent owned by the taxpayer, claimed it had to continue shrinking as a condition of accepting state aid. About a third of the job losses follow its enforced sale of 318 branches to rival Santander.

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The cuts were met with anger from union Unite which branded them a “horror story” just weeks after the bank announced half-year profits of 1.1bn.

Roles to go include jobs in property, accounting, payments, IT and call centres.

Last night Unite national officer Rob MacGregor said: “The scale of the cuts announced today beggars belief and staff across the country will be left reeling.

“It will be an especially bitter pill for staff to swallow as RBS has decided to move some of the jobs abroad to the Far East, India and America.”

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RBS’s Harrogate office at Central House in Otley Road will close with the loss of 509 jobs. A total of 109 jobs will go next year, the rest in 2012.

Some Harrogate jobs are expected to transfer to a venture capital consortium which bought most of RBS’s Global Merchant Services business last month, but the bank does not know how many.

Harrogate and Knaresborough MP Andrew Jones said: “Its loss would be a significant blow to our local economy and to its employees and their families.”

The chief executive of the Harrogate Chamber of Commerce, Brian Dunsby, was last night optimistic that the town’s businesses would absorb any redundancies. “I see it as an opportunity,” he said.

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Another 283 jobs will be cut next year in Leeds centre with the closure of RBS’s Victoria Place office. In 2012 RBS will also close its centre at Kingfisher House in Bradford with 270 job losses.

Other sites to close are in Bolton, Enfield, Bristol, Borehamwood, Liverpool, Milton Keynes, Plymouth, Telford and Norwich.

The retained sites will be Rotherham, Birmingham, Bolton, Chatham, Edinburgh, Greenock, London, Manchester, Southend and Menai.

RBS said in a statement: "Having to cut jobs is the most difficult part of our work to rebuild RBS and repay taxpayers for their support.

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"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 European Union. We will do all we can to support our staff."

Last month RBS said it was axing 150 insurance jobs in Doncaster, as part of plans to close 14 of the 27 offices in its Churchill and Direct Line businesses. It said three in offices in Leeds and one in Doncaster will become core sites in insurance.

The latest cuts bring the total number of job losses announced by RBS to 26,600 globally, including 21,600 in the UK, since the start of the financial crisis. RBS employs about 160,000 people globally, of whom 100,000 are in Britain.

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