Lloyds cuts 2000 more employees

Lloyds Banking Group, the part-nationalised bank, is to get rid of another 2100 jobs taking the total jobs lost since Lloyds merged with HBOS and received £17billion of taxpayers' money to just over 7000.

Today's announcement covers jobs in processing, administration and business banking with cuts spread across the UK.

The union Unite, which represents bank workers, said it was "astonished" by the latest cuts.

National officer Rob MacGregor said: "Morale is now truly low as employees across Lloyds are in a permanent state of anxiety as they see their employer announce hundreds of job losses every week."

Lloyds said it would try to avoid compulsory redundancies with the cuts phased over three years and 700 of them to be from not replacing workers who have left or contract and agency workers.