Lloyds to cut 5,000 jobs

As some of these cuts refer to temporary staff and contractors, the bank said this would result in the permanent loss of 2,600 UK jobs. This will bring the total tally of jobs cuts during the financial crisis to 12,500.

Most of the redundancies will come in its operations unit where 1,350 jobs will be cut. The operations unit includes IT, collections and payment services.
The other division affected will be insurance, where there will be a loss of 940 jobs.

Lloyds said its policy will be to use natural turnover and to redeploy people wherever possible so expertise and knowledge will be retained.

It will look to achieve this by offering voluntary severance and by making less use of contractors and agency colleagues. Compulsory redundancies will be a last resort.

Mark Fisher, group director at Lloyds, said: "Our commitment is to keep colleagues fully informed about our integration plans We will continue to work closely with our colleagues affected by today's announcement to help them through these changes over the coming year."

The Unions Accord, LTU and Unite were consulted prior to the announcement but they reacted angrily to the news.

Rob MacGregor, national officer at Unite, said: "This announcement demonstrates the depth of corporate arrogance within this taxpayer supported bank. This country's financial sector should be looking towards the future, rather than continuing to slash jobs without proper consideration of how to rebuild the public's confidence in our tarnished banking sector."

He added: "Unite is calling for the immediate suspension of all job losses in order for the company to introduce an agreement with the union of no compulsory redundancies in any section of Lloyds. The Government cannot afford to continue to look the other way as hard-working families are punished in this manner."

Accord, the union that represents the largest number of former HBOS employees now working in Lloyds, said the job cuts were "terrible news" for employees.

Ged Nichols, general secretary at Accord, said: "We always recognised that some job losses were inevitable as Lloyds TSB integrated HBOS operations, but the scale of changes announced today will leave many staff in shock."