‘Deplorable’ job losses

The threat to 82 jobs at Aviva in Leicester, after the insurance giant said that it was closing its office in the city, has been strongly deplored by Unite today (September 15).

The jobs are based at the city’s Princess Road West – and the redundancies are expected to be completed by December 31 this year.

The work from Leicester will be transferred to a new ‘digital hub’ in Perth, Scotland or one of Avia’s local underwriting teams, however, a small underwriting team will remain in Leicester.

A handful of jobs will also go in London, bringing the total job losses to 85 roles.

“Any loss of jobs is to be strongly deplored, but we are working closely with the company to mitigate the number of jobs under threat,” said Unite national officer for finance Dominic Hook.

“The company is planning to reduce the staff from the current figure of about 116 roles in Leicester, with those staff retained moving to a more mobile operation, either based in brokers’ offices or working from home with occasional site/broker visits.

“We have just entered the 45-day consultation period and Unite will be doing all it can to provide maximum support to our members at Aviva at this time of worry and uncertainty for them.”

The jobs under threat are in General Insurance (GI) Commercial dealing with small and medium commercial enterprise policies and broker trading.