Northern Rock has announced plans to lay off 1,300 staff as part of a restructuring.

The cuts – which will come before the end of August – are the first wave of the 2,000 redundancies the troubled bank previously said it would be making by 2011.

The bank expects 800 of these losses will be compulsory job cuts, and the other 500 will leave voluntarily, leaving the company with around 4,000 employees, down from a peak of 6,500.

The announcement follows difficult consultations between Northern Rock and Unite, Britain’s largest union, which had been opposing any compulsory redundancies. The lender hopes remaining planned staff cutbacks of around 700 before 2011 will be achieved through natural turnover.

Financial Times, The Times, The Independent