Fears for Yorkshire jobs as bank to axe 2,600

The part-nationalised bank said it is to cut 2,600 jobs across Britain – 2,000 of which will go from the bank's insurance arm, home to many jobs in Yorkshire.

Nearly 4,000 people in the region work for the RBS insurance businesses, including Direct Line, Green Flag, Churchill and Privilege. They are based primarily at Pudsey, near Leeds, but also at Doncaster, Normanton, Barnsley and Leeds itself.

However, a spokesman said the bank has yet to decide where it will impose the cuts, leaving workers facing an anxious wait as bosses begin work on determining where the redundancies will fall. The remaining 600 jobs will be lost at RBS's retail banking headquarters which are in Edinburgh and London.

The latest cuts bring the total job losses at the company to 22,600 – 16,600 of them in Britain – since the start of the financial crisis.

rbs, which is 83 per cent owned by the taxpayer, is trying to offload its insurance businesses after the European Commission ordered it to do so to soothe competition concerns following its state bail-out.

The bank said in a statement: "We are working hard to rebuild RBS to repay taxpayers for their support.

"So far, the job losses we've announced have resulted in fewer than one in four being made compulsorily redundant."

The union Unite condemned the latest round of job cuts and said its members would be "devastated" at the news.