UP to 200 people are set to lose their jobs at Nationwide, staff have been told.

Staff at the Piper's Way office were told of the impending redundancies on Tuesday, November 28. 

The Adver understands there was a mass meeting at the site where staff were told that 500 jobs were being put at risk, with 200 of those set to be let go after a redundancy consultation process. 

Staff were then sent a further email, and a private phone call to inform them that consultations would start soon, according to a source.

Swindon Advertiser: A spokesperson for the building society said the cuts were needed to ensure good customer service going forward. 

They told the Adver: "Our strategy is to give customers greater value, better products and a distinctive customer experience. To do this our systems and operations must be best-in-class and we need to be more agile and efficient.

"We are streamlining some of our head office teams, which will enable us to increase investment in the value and service we provide our customers.

"Customer-facing colleagues will not be impacted.

"We have worked hard to keep the number of affected colleagues to a minimum and are ensuring we provide the right support for those impacted.” 

This follows a previous round of redundancies, mostly at Pipers Way, which saw around 450 staff lose their jobs in February.

At the time, Nationwide confirmed these cuts were for a similar reason, with a spokesperson saying they were to 'streamline' certain parts of its central non-member-facing teams around the UK. 

These cuts were described by Tim Rose, the general secretary of the Nationwide Staff Group Union, as representing "the most significant loss of jobs for many years."

Nationwide recently underwent and unveiled a branding change in October. 

As part of this, it promised that the company would not leave any town or city without a branch until at least 2026.

Swindon Advertiser: Nationwide commits to not closing its branches in rollout of new brandingNationwide commits to not closing its branches in rollout of new branding (Image: Nationwide)Between April 1 and September 30, 2023, the building society’s profits rose from £980m to £1,262m, and the business returned nearly all of that - £1,229m – in value to its members through better rates and incentives and the £100 Fairer Share payment given to 3.4 million customers in June.

Nationwide employs around 18,000 staff across the country and 6,500 solely at its Pipers Way headquarters.