LONDON (Guardian) -- Lloyds TSB is axing 550 British jobs as a result of closing more than 30 Cheltenham & Gloucester branches and sending 210 IT jobs offshore.

The IT jobs being moved abroad amount to nearly half the staff in that division. They will come from offices in London, Cardiff and Manchester. One hundred are permanent staff jobs and 110 are contract positions. All of the bank's IT staff will be offered voluntary redundancy terms.
Staff will be told of the cutbacks and closures at the Cheltenham & Gloucester tomorrow. A spokesman refused to comment on the scale of the cuts, but it is understood 31 of the building society's offices will be shut down, with 340 job losses.
Lloyds TSB is the UK's fifth biggest bank, with 2,000 branches and 10 million customers. Last week it reported half-year profits of £2bn, up 15% on a year earlier. It bought Cheltenham & Gloucester in 1995.
Lloyds was one of the first UK high street banks to move large amounts of work overseas. It opened its first Indian call centre, in Mumbai, in 2004. But this year it started to repatriate many of the frontline customer account inquiry services that had been sent to India after frustrated customers started to close accounts.
The Mumbai call centre, which at its peak had employed 700 local workers, was closed down and a new automated answering service set up. Lloyds said customers would once again be able to call their local branch direct.
He said the bank had an agreement with the Unite union to ensure all staff were offered permanent jobs elsewhere within the group