13,000 jobs at risk as BT moves to cut costs

Staff: Majority of jobs in firing line are in UK as group moves to ditch HQ

BT is to axe around 13,000 jobs as part of a revamped cost-cutting drive.

The telecoms giant – which is a major employer in Scotland and has a large operational base in Dundee – said the job losses would mainly affect back office and middle management roles, with two thirds of the cuts set to fall on UK staff.

Remaining staff cuts are expected to impact upon BT’s operations abroad.

Plans were also revealed to exit the BT headquarters in central London, though another site in the capital is expected to house its head office.

The move comes as BT looks to cut costs by around £1.5 billion by the final year of its three-year plan.

Despite the changes, BT will recruit around 6,000 new employees “to support network deployment and customer service”.

BT has around 106,400 staff globally, with 82,800 in the UK.

The FTSE 100 firm saw its shares tank on the news, falling 8.8% in early exchanges.

The announcement comes nearly a year after the company said it was to axe 4,000 jobs as part of a restructuring of its Global Services unit.

“Decisions like this are not easy,” BT chief executive Gavin Patterson said.

“We recognise that it is going to affect a lot of people, but ultimately we need to do these things to ensure that we remain a competitive business going forward and that we can benchmark our performance against peer companies.”

BT explained it was making moves to simplify its operating model by “de-layering” its management structure and ensuring there are “fewer, bigger, more accountable leadership roles”.

It was also trying to improve productivity across its core UK operations, including “process simplification and automation to reduce costs”.

Philippa Childs, national secretary of the Prospect union, said the scale of the job cuts will come as a “devastating blow” to the managers and professionals it represents at BT.

“Many of the roles that BT is proposing to cut are highly skilled professionals and the loss of that expertise could impact BT’s research and innovation capability,” she said. “The strategic update came as BT released its full-year results which showed a 1% drop in revenue to £23.7bn, while reported pre-tax profits rose 11% to £2.6bn.

It booked a £241m restructuring charge over the period, when it cut more than 2,800 roles mainly across managerial and back office staff.

BT chief executive Gavin Patterson said the proposed cuts were required to ensure the telecoms group remained competitive.