7:00pm Thursday 4th February 2010
By Tim Saunders
Nationwide Building Society is shutting its call centre in Bournemouth.
The society intends to close its facility at Richmond Hill in June with the potential loss of more than 40 jobs.
The operation will move to two purpose-built facilities in Swindon and Wakefield.
However, Tim Poil, general secretary at Nationwide Group Staff Union said that the society wants to find alternative employment at its offices for the 47 staff to be made redundant.
“There are 19 roles available today, which leaves us with 28 to find over the next three to four months,” Mr Poil said.
“There’s a real confidence that jobs can be found for those people.
“We are as upbeat as we can be at keeping all those people in work if they want to be.”
Charlotte Sjoberg, spokeswoman for Nationwide Building Society added: “The only department that is in consultation is the call centre. There are no plans to close the building.
“We are absolutely not closing the building – we have 750 people there.
“A consultation period has started for one month where we are going to look at the future of the Bournemouth call centre but no decision has been made.
“It may close, it may not. The employees at the call centre have been told the consultation has started.”
She added that the building society is working with staff and the Nationwide Group Staff Union.
The Richmond Hill office supports Nationwide’s specialist lending function for buy to let mortgages, which has seen reduced in demand as a result of the recession.
Nationwide, whose head office is in Swindon, also operates call centres in Northampton and Sheffield.
The Richmond Hill office was built in 2001 as the head office for Portman Building Society, whose roots dated back to 1846.
Portman merged with Nationwide in August 2007.
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