More than 3,000 jobs were lost across the United Kingdom yesterday as banks, retailers, media and construction groups braced for a grim Christmas and a tough new year.

Santander, the Spanish bank, has cut 1,900 jobs at its British subsidiaries Abbey, Alliance & Leicester and Bradford & Bingley, and the axe also fell on Woolworths, the collapsed retailer, whose administrator has laid off 700 at the company’s once-profitable EUK distribution business.

United Media cut 350 and M J Gleeson, the contractor, shed 174. Elsewhere Zavvi, previously known as Virgin Megastores, confirmed a report inThe Timesthat a restructuring team from Ernst & Young was working at the company, which employs 2,500.

Strategic Retail, the furnishings retailer that owns the Fads, Leveys and Texstyle World chains, went into administration yesterday, putting about 350 jobs at risk.

A survey undertaken by the Recruitment and Employment Federation, a leading trade body, indicates that almost half of its client companies are delaying redundancies until the new year, suggesting that a further bloodletting is yet to come.

The string of announcements rounded off a grim week for British workers. Rolls-Royce said this week that it would cut 150 jobs at its factory in East Kilbride, Scotland. British Airways said that it would lose more than 100 jobs at Gatwick and CN Group, a publisher in Carlisle, will eliminate 40 positions. Transport for London was considering “several hundred” job cuts in an efficiency drive.

The bulk of the cuts announced yesterday came from Santander, where 8 per cent of the bank’s British staff will lose their jobs. The redundancies are part of a plan to achieve £180 million in cost savings by 2012 as a consequence of its takeover of Alliance & Leicester this year.

The Spanish bank announced in October that it was on track for record full-year profits despite an economic slowdown in its home country and turbulence in markets around the world. Its third-quarter net profit rose 4.3 per cent to €2.2 billion (£1.97 billion).

Santander bought B&B’s £20 billion deposit business and the network of 200 branches for £400 million in September after it fell into trouble during the credit crisis. The deal was underwritten by British taxpayers.

The cuts this week follow a series of redundancies in investment banks over the past three months. Almost every investment bank in London has cut thousands of jobs, and the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September left 13,000 without a livelihood. British banks, including HSBC and RBS, have eliminated thousands of jobs.

Until now, apart from a plan by BT to shed 10,000 positions, most of the jobs lost have been in the City or in financial services. However, the redundancies detailed yesterday confirm that the problems are sweeping through the real economy. Retailers, in particular, are facing a bloodbath on the high street.

Deloitte, the accountancy firm working with Woolworths and its distribution division, admitted that it had been unable to find a buyer for EUK, and the job losses add to the 450 staff previously cut from Woolworths’ head office. Sources close to the process say that the company’s warehouses will be sold to a logistics operator and that the remaining 375 workers are likely to lose their jobs.

The collapse of EUK has wreaked havoc on retailers in the run-up to their busiest trading period. Zavvi, which relied on EUK for all its DVDs and CDs, was still not taking online orders yesterday because it has no stock to ship. Zavvi insisted yesterday that E&Y had been appointed by its board rather than by its creditors.

However, The Times understands that Virgin Group, a Zavvi creditor, drafted in E&Y after pressure from Deloitte, the administrator of EUK, which is Zavvi’s biggest creditor.

Virgin declined to comment.

Job losses pile up

Yesterday’s cuts
Abbey, A&L, B&B: 1,900
Woolworth’s EUK: 700
United Business Media: 350
MJ Gleeson: 174

Recent big UK job cuts
BT: 10,000
Wolesley: 4,000
Virgin Media: 2,200
Nomura: 1,000

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