Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has said that it will be cutting a further 40 per cent of permanent IT staff from its London base by 2020, according to the Unite union.

The latest cuts, coupled with the 65 per cent reduction of contractors also announced, will result in a total reduction of 880 staff.

The Unite union has labelled the move from the bank as “wholly unacceptable”. In 2016, RBS employed 2,200 IT staff, but by 2020 there will be just 950 full-time employees.

Rob MacGregor, Unite’s national officer, said: “Royal Bank of Scotland is continuing with its savage jobs culling programme with today’s announcement of a 40 per cent cut in IT staff, totalling nearly 900 staff. The decade of slashing jobs has done nothing to boost morale, increase consumer confidence or improve the bank’s performance.

“By 2020 just a fraction of the RBS IT function will remain, leaving this organisation operating a skeleton service with the customers and remaining staff paying the price,” he continued.

“RBS’s fixation with cutting employee numbers, restructuring and offshoring work that could reasonably be done by displaced staff within the RBS IT community is unacceptable. This British taxpayer-funded bank should be concentrating on investing in jobs here in the UK, rather than wholesale cuts.”

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