A further 650 employees of Lloyds Banking Group will lose their jobs as the bank continues to struggle with the fallout from the recession.
The bank will also close its independent Halifax agencies, which were acquired as part of the government-backed purchase of HBOS in 2008.
The employees of the 265 Halifax-branded agencies are not directly employed by Lloyds but the bank will assist with their redundancy package.
The agencies, which were initially developed as a way of increasing Halifax’s presence without opening full branches, are usually located within estate agents, insurance agents or solicitors’ offices.
Lloyds, which has already lost or scaled back 15,000 jobs owing to the recession, will also close a site in Nottingham.
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The losses announced today will mostly affect insurance and back office staff. Around 1,850 jobs will be affected, mainly in Nottingham and Chester, with a net loss of 650 people. The bank, which is 41.3 per cent owned by the government, has also cut back on temporary staff.
Cath Speight, national officer at Unite, said: “For the staff at Lloyds today marks the start of another long summer of worry as they now face uncertainty about the security of their job.
“This taxpayer-owned financial institution needs to focus on retaining the hard-working staff who have ensured the highest levels of service to its customers over the past 18 difficult months, not dumping them on the scrapheap.”
Lloyds has struck a deal with the Post Office to allow Halifax customers to pay in cash and cheques at its 12,000 branches.