Lloyds attacked over new job cuts

Lloyds Banking Group has come under attack after announcing a further 550 job cuts.

Unite said the cuts were on top of 1,340 job losses announced in January.

The union said that while the bank continued to cut directly employed jobs, the group was still taking on more agency workers.

Unite national officer Dominic Hook said: "Lloyds cannot continue to cut now then ask questions later. It's madness that the bank has so many agency workers when it's cutting so many permanent jobs.

"Lloyds is looking for a period of stability and growth but it won't be achieved by continuous and damaging job cuts. The bank must put an end to mass redundancies and instead foster job security, pay workers fairly and concentrate on customer service."

Lloyds said the 550 jobs would be cut from its risk, insurance, commercial banking, retail and wealth, asset finance and international divisions and were part of previously announced reductions.

"Lloyds Banking Group is committed to working through these changes with employees in a careful and sensitive way. All affected employees have been briefed by their line manager today.

"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. During 2012, only around a third of the role reductions have led to people leaving the group through redundancy."