Lloyds Banking Group is to create 60 new jobs in Fife as part of a major restructuring programme which will see it cut hundreds of staff at another UK site.
The group said a total of 275 new jobs were being added across two sites at Pitreavie in Dunfermline and at Belfast in Northern Ireland at the same time as 850 roles are being cut in Essex.
Lloyds is one of the most important employers in Fife with more than 3,000 staff working in a variety of customer-facing and back offices roles for the bank’s retail division.
The jobs boost for Fife emerged at the same time as Lloyds confirmed it was closing its telephone banking and fraud prevention service in Southend.
Lloyds said both moves came as a result of a major “simplification programme” announced in the summer of 2011 and which is being implemented across the group.
A central tenet of the plan is to reduce Lloyds’ overall workforce by 15,000 and focus more on multi-function sites like Pitreavie.
In a statement, Lloyds confirmed it was creating the new jobs in Scotland and Ireland while other staff were facing the axe.
The group stressed the changes were not related to Wednesday’s agreement to sell its 50% stake in Sainsbury’s Bank to the supermarket giant a move that affects around 200 Lloyds staff in Fife who are to transfer to their new employer under TUPE regulations.
Lloyds said efforts would be made to redeploy staff threatened with redundancy elsewhere in its business although it is unlikely to be practical for many staff in Essex to move to Scotland or Ireland.