BT cuts 13,000 jobs to cut costs

The company said the job losses would mainly affect back office and middle management roles, with two thirds of the cuts set fall on UK staff.

BT has a strong presence in Wolverhampton, Walsall, Dudley and West Bromwich, and remains a key local employer.

In total, BT employs more than 6,000 people across the counties of the West Midlands.

There are no details yet of what the move means for individual locations around the country.

Remaining staff cuts are expected to impact upon BT's operations abroad.

Plans were also revealed to exit the BT headquarters in central London, though another site in the capital is expected to house its head office.

The move comes as BT looks to cut costs by around £1.5 billion by the final year of its three-year plan.

The telecoms firm added that it would be hiring around 6,000 new employees "to support network deployment and customer service".

BT has around 106,400 employees globally, with 82,800 in the UK.

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.

Competitive

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 going forward and that we can benchmark our performance against peer companies."

He added that it was the "right thing for the business" and helps take BT "into its next chapter".

BT said 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 was also trying to improve productivity across its core UK operations, including "process simplification and automation to reduce costs".

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."