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Barclays Bank axes 250 IT contractors

Posted Jan 7, 2009

After a series of widely-publicised rate cuts in the financial services sector, today Barclays Bank confirmed that it will be laying off 250 IT contractors as the recession continues to bite.

Barclays, which employs 150,000 people worldwide, is making 408 people redundant from its IT department - including 158 permies as well as the contractor job cull. The contractors affected work at IT sites in London, Cheshire and Northampton.

The Bank says it plans to limit the number of permanent staff which may lose their jobs due to the credit crisis, and plans to do so by releasing contract workers, and encouraging existing employees to employ for other roles rather than letting them go.

The news follows on from the across-the-board 10% rate cut applied to all Barclays contractors in August 2008.

In a statement, Barclays said that it "continually reviews its operations and resources so that it functions as efficiently as possible as business needs and customer requirements evolve.

"As part of this process, we have identified some aspects of our technology operations where the organisational structure impedes performance, and roles and responsibilities for colleagues are unclear. In some cases, roles are obsolete or being duplicated elsewhere within the bank."

When releasing the number of roles to be axed, the Bank made it clear that none of the roles would be "offshored".

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