THE trade union for Barclays staff has welcomed the decision to lease a new site in Bournemouth when the bank moves out of Poole’s Barclays House.

The union Unite said more than half the eight-storey Poole building was currently vacant or “mothballed”.

In a newsletter, Unite said Barclays was expecting no more than a quarter of the building to be occupied on any given day.

As revealed by the Daily Echo, Barclays is leaving Barclays House after 46 years, with 429 of its 708 permanent roles moving to The Helm in Bournemouth.

Unite said 51 jobs would be offshored to India and 50 jobs would go. The bank has brought more than 1,000 roles back from overseas during the pandemic.

It said in the newsletter: “It is proposed that a physical exit from the site will need to take place by the end of June 2022 and that the full building decommission will complete by the end of 2022.

“Unite welcomes the decision by Barclays to lease a new site in Bournemouth to accommodate well over half (61 per cent) of the impacted employees in Poole, securing over 400 jobs in the area.

“The new site, located at The Helm, Bournemouth, is approximately six miles away from Barclays House, Poole. Employees will move to this new site during the first half of 2022.

“Of the remaining 39 per cent of roles, 174 will relocate to other strategic sites within the UK, 51 roles will be offshored to India and 50 roles will unfortunately be lost.

“Through constructive consultation with Barclays, Unite has influenced a number of aspects of this change programme and the bank has agreed a number of initiatives to mitigate unwanted job losses.

“For example, in addition to retaining 433 jobs locally the bank has confirmed that it will consider displacement job matching as a positive action to prevent unwanted redundancies.”

Displacement job matching involves allowing staff at risk of redundancy to fill suitable jobs left open by people who do not want to move sites.

“Barclays has also identified further 40 potential roles in the locality for colleagues at risk of redundancy,” the Unite letter said.

“Unite welcomes the concessions that the business has made, in line with partnership principles,” Unite added.

“We understand that this will be a difficult and uncertain time for many colleagues and we are fully committed to supporting our members through these changes and helping our members to obtain satisfactory outcomes wherever possible.”