Barclays slashes 422 IT jobs

Barclays today announced 422 job cuts across its technology and infrastructure division, as part of what it called "essential changes."

The posts represent 0.74 per cent of the bank's UK staff and Barclays said it would do its best to redeploy impacted staff.

It will also open a voluntary redundancy register "to minimise compulsory redundancies wherever possible."

Unite has strongly opposed the sending of some of this work to Lithuania.

"We need to make essential changes to our technology and infrastructure division so that we can innovate in new technologies and services for our customers, and be as effective and efficient as possible," a Barclays spokesperson said.

"Whilst regrettably this will mean job losses, we will make every effort to mitigate compulsory redundancies and are working closely with Unite and impacted staff."

Despite Barclays' claims of closeness with Unite, the union said the cuts were "a new year's blow for the staff."

"Unite has strongly opposed the sending of some of this work to Lithuania, when there are already highly trained workers carrying out this work," said David Fleming, Unite national officer.

"The vast majority of jobs will be going from Radbrooke Hall, Cheshire. There will also be jobs cut in Northampton and a scattering among other sites around the country."

The announcement came on the same day as the Royal Bank of Scotland announced it was cutting 4,450 jobs, including 3,500 from its investment bank. Another 950 are set to go in Ireland.