Member Article

Lloyds Banking Group closes Warrington call centre

Lloyds Banking Group has confirmed that it to make around 580 job cuts as part of the reductions previously announced in the Group’s Strategic Review.

The Group says these ‘role reductions’ will be within Group Operations, HR, Consumer Finance, Retail and Commercial Banking.

It adds that there will be around 645 such ‘reductions’; however approximately 65 new roles will be created across Group Operations and Retail.

In a statement, the company said: “The Group’s recognised unions Accord, Unite, GMB and LTU were consulted prior to this announcement and will continue to be consulted.

“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, since the Strategic Review in 2011 around only a third of role reductions have led to people leaving the Group through redundancy.

“As part of the Group’s simplification programme set out in its 2011 strategic plan, we have reached the decision to close Warrington Contact Centre, leading to around 180 role reductions, with around 120 roles also moving to nearby Speke, in Liverpool.

“Telephone banking call volumes are falling as digital banking usage continues to grow, and we are refocusing the business to reflect these changes in our customers’ habits, while ensuring we maintain our high standards for those who wish to continue using our telephone banking systems by bringing our telephone banking colleagues together at fewer, more specialised sites.

“Pooling our talent in this way enables us to operate more efficiently and improve our service to customers while providing greater career opportunities and a stronger support network for colleagues”.

Responding for the town, Stephen Broomhead, the Chairman of Warrington & Co. said: ’It is always regrettable when any organisation decides to close its Warrington office and when job losses are announced. We are aware that this has been a difficult decision for Lloyds Bank to make but is reflective of customer banking trends favouring digital banking.

“Warrington & Co., is Warrington’s partnership for economic growth and we will be discussing with Lloyds ways in which we can assist the employees currently based at the Warrington office to help them find alternative employment through our Redundancy Action Support programme.

“We are optimistic that the affected employees will find alternative employment within the borough of Warrington which currently has third highest employment rate per capita in the UK and the fourth highest jobs growth rate”.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Simon Malia .