Bristol RBS site to close with 440 jobs lost

Some 440 jobs will be lost as the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) closes a site in Bristol, the Unite union has said. The bank, which is is more than 80% owned by the taxpayer, said the cuts were part of 3,000 job losses announced last year. Unite urged the RBS to reconsider the closure, warning that it would "devastate" the local area. A spokesman for RBS said the company would do all it could to "offer redeployment opportunities". David Fleming, from the union, said: "Unite has expressed to the Royal Bank of Scotland its frustration about the bank's decision to close its site in Bristol and also make another 440 staff cuts from its customer support operations. "The Aztec West site is the second site closure announced by RBS in the South West, as the Plymouth site is also closing." A spokesman for RBS said: "We identified the sites that would close over the next two years and committed to giving our employees 12 months' notice of the closures. "We will do all we can to support our employees, offer redeployment opportunities wherever possible and to keep compulsory redundancies to an absolute minimum. "Having to cut jobs is the most difficult part of our work to rebuild RBS." The job losses were announced just hours before Chancellor George Osborne presented the Government's Autumn Statement to Parliament.