RBS to axe another 3,500 jobs

Published on Wednesday 1 September 2010 12:07

ROYAL Bank of Scotland is axing another 3,500 jobs under plans to more than halve the bank's administration centres across the UK, it was announced today.

The Edinburgh-based bank has told staff that up to 12 offices could close in England, but some jobs could actually be added in the Capital and Greenock.

Part-nationalised RBS said the job losses would go across back office and IT functions in the business services arm - coming on top of the division's 9,000 job cuts announced last year.

The bank, which is 83 per cent owned by the taxpayer, will close 12 of its business services centres across the UK and put three under review.

RBS said the latest jobs cull would start next year and run through to the end of 2012.

Today's UK jobs blow comes just a week after RBS revealed that 14 of its 27 offices in the Churchill and Direct Line insurance arm were being axed.

Trade union Unite described the announcement as a "horror story".

Rob MacGregor, Unite national officer, said it would be a particularly "bitter pill for staff to swallow" as RBS has decided to move 500 of the jobs offshore to the Far East, India and America.

He said: "The scale of the cuts announced today beggars belief and staff across the country today will be left reeling from this news."

All the 3,500 cuts announced will affect the bank's UK administration workforce. RBS said it had almost completed the 9,000 job losses first revealed last year, of which 4,500 were in the UK.

The business services division previously employed around 45,000 globally.

The bank will retain 10 back office centres, but those in the following sites will be affected: Leeds, Bolton, Enfield, Harrogate, Bristol, Borehamwood, Liverpool, Milton Keynes, Plymouth, Telford, Bradford and Norwich.

RBS said around a third of the job cuts come as a direct result of the sale of 318 branches to Santander, which it was ordered to offload by the European Commission.

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

"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." He says his students come from all walks of life and every age group. Some want to open their own restaurants, some want to provide outside catering or operate a chalet business and some just want to be better cooks.

Pirrie feels it's the desire to work for themselves rather than an employer, to win a sense of individual achievement, that drives many people. The ESFW runs a range of courses from one-day events to a six-month diploma that costs students 9,500. It sounds a lot but the tutoring covers everything from business planning in conjunction with Napier University to your uniform and a personally engraved set of knives to take away.

Pirrie's original career was in banking, "but I'd always been interested in food and I did some training of my own," he says. "The most important quality is to have the will and the desire to learn. If you have that, then you will flourish in this environment. It is far more important than the existing level of skills that you have."