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By Tim Ferguson, 17 July 2009 15:09

NEWS

The Lloyds Banking Group has confirmed that hundreds of IT roles will be axed by March 2010 as part of the latest wave of job cuts at the company.

Lloyds said the 660 IT jobs will mainly go in Edinburgh, Halifax, Leeds and London as part of 1,200 job cuts across the business. Around 260 of the IT positions that go will be contractor roles.

Since Lloyds-TSB acquired HBOS at the beginning of the year the business has been going through each department making redundancies as it consolidates its operations. IT, collections and insurance are the latest areas to be affected.

In parallel, 180 roles, many of which are IT-related, have been created as part of the latest restructuring. As a result, some of the people affected by the job cuts will be able to find another role within the business, according to a Lloyds Banking Group spokesman.

The company previously had separate IT departments for each business area and is now moving towards a more centralised IT model.

"What we're trying to do is to achieve cost savings and remove duplication were we can," Lloyds Banking Group's spokesman told silicon.com.

One of the bank's biggest unions, Accord, said the job losses at the bank since January now stand at around 8,200, which equates to around five per cent of the total workforce.

Ged Nichols, general secretary of Accord - which has around 700 members who will be directly affected by the changes - told silicon.com that the job cuts since the beginning of the year are likely to impact customer service.

"I genuinely believe that the low level of morale in parts of the organisation that arises from the job insecurity must impact upon the way employees in the business feel and the way they interact with customers - if this is not true then all of the management effort on colleague engagement etc is surely a waste of time," he said.

Lloyds' spokesman refuted the claim, however. "All of the roles that were announced were non-customer facing. There will be absolutely no impact for customers as a result of the announcement," he said.