BT unveils plan to cut 13,000 jobs and quit London headquarters

Telecoms giant BT is to axe around 13,000 jobs as part of a cost cutting drive, which will see it leave its London headquarters.

The firm said it could not reveal how many of the job losses will fall north of the Border, where it employs 7,400 people.

The cuts, announced as the firm revealed a 1 per cent dip in annual revenue, would mainly affect back office and middle management roles, with two thirds of the cuts affecting UK staff. Remaining job losses are expected to hit BT’S operations abroad.

BT, which is looking to cut costs by around £1.5 billion by the final year of its threeyear plan, added that it would be hiring around 6,000 new employees “to support network deployment and customer service”.

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.

A BT spokeswoman said the company could not yet say what the cuts would mean for Scotland. She said: “There are no details at this stage of either the reduction in roles, or the new jobs we have announced today, or what this means for individual locations around the country.”

BT said that 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 said it was also trying to improve productivity. Around 80 per cent of BT’S staff are currently based in around 50 locations, with some cities hosting multiple offices. It hopes to cut that to around 30 “modern strategic sites”.

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. “We are also concerned that cutting such a large number of roles will inevitably impact those who remain in BT and could lead to work being pushed down to employees in lower grades.”

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