Barclays to offshore 1,800 IT jobs

Barclays is to cut 1,800 IT posts in the UK as part of plans to create centrally managed technology "centres of excellence" in key offshore locations around the globe.

The global infrastructure and service delivery (GISD) roles will be scrapped in the UK and new jobs created in Hungary, India and Singapore over the next two years, with 700 UK posts to be lost by September this year.

By 2010 the number of UK tech jobs at Barclays will be reduced by 1,800, a figure that includes IT contractors as well as employees. That will leave 1,000 GISD jobs remaining in the UK, based in Cheshire and London.

This will allow Barclays to create around 1,700 new roles offshore in global technology centres of excellence.

Most of the affected UK tech staff will either be redeployed or offered voluntary redundancy packages. Fewer than 50 staff are expected to face compulsory redundancy out of the 700 posts initially affected this year, according to the trade union Unite, which said future growth would further reduce losses.

But Unite warned of higher levels of redundancies in the following years, as many contractor posts will have already been filled by redeployments.

Keith Brookes, national secretary for Barclays at Unite, said: "We can avoid heavy duty compulsory redundancies because of the long lead time on the talks between Barclays and the union.

"The move is inevitable but we have to ensure that the UK is maintained as a centre of excellence and we have that commitment from the bank."

He said the majority of the redeployed staff would enter jobs at the same level and in the same locations.

Unite asked for all affected staff to be given three months working notice and three months paid redundancy notice, and for redundant staff seeking retraining externally to be given a £2,000 allowance.

Barclays has also promised there will be no more tech job losses this year outside of the offshoring initiative, Unite says.

A spokeswoman for Barclays said: "Barclays ambition is to become one of a handful of universal banks leading the global financial services industry, helping our customers and clients throughout the world to achieve their goals.

"We need to transform to a global organisation, able to serve the needs of our customers and clients who have operations around the world.

"As far as possible, we will manage the reduction in headcount by reducing the number of contractors and temps we employ."