BT to axe 13,000 jobs - despite announcing £2.6 billion profits

BT has announced that it is to axe around 13,000 jobs as part of a cost-cutting drive - with two thirds of the cuts set fall on UK staff.

Remaining staff cuts are expected to impact upon the telecoms giant's operations abroad.

BT said the job losses would mainly affect back office and middle management roles.

Plans were also revealed to exit the BT headquarters in central London, though another site in the capital is expected to house its head office.

The move comes as BT looks to cut costs by around £1.5 billion by the final year of its three-year plan.

BT said the move out of its current London HQ formed part of a plan to cut the number of locations it owns across the UK.

The company said that about 80% of its staff were based in around 50 offices across the UK. That number will be cut to 30 “modern, strategic sites to create a more collaborative, open and customer-focused working culture”.

The telecoms firm added that it would be hiring around 6,000 new employees "to support network deployment and customer service".

BT has around 106,400 employees globally, with 82,800 in the UK.

The FTSE 100 firm saw its shares tank on the news, falling as much as 8.8% at the start of trading.

The announcement comes nearly a year after the company said it was to axe 4,000 jobs as part of a restructuring of its Global Services unit.

'Decisions like this are not easy'

BT chief executive Gavin Patterson said: "Decisions like this are not easy."

"We recognise that it is going to affect a lot of people, but ultimately we need to do these things to ensure that we remain a competitive business going forward and that we can benchmark our performance against peer companies," he told reporters.

He added that it was the "right thing for the business" and helps take BT "into its next chapter".

BT explained on Thursday that it was making moves to simplify its operating model by "de-layering" its management structure and ensuring there are "fewer, bigger, more accountable leadership roles".