Some 162 jobs are to go at the Midland headquarters of a national home insurance and repairs company following a sharp fall in UK customers.
The job losses at Walsall-based Homeserve are part of a programme of 300 redundancies across it’s three UK offices, which include Banbury and Preston.
Chief executive Richard Harpin said Homeserve would take a £4 million charge on the job cuts, which follow a large-scale programme of redundancies last year.
Mr Harpin added: “Our UK business is making progress improving the effectiveness of its sales and marketing activity and we have clear plans for increasing both customer acquisition and retention over the next two years.
“We expect the UK customer base to stabilise at around 1.9 million customers by March 2014 and this will reduce the UK financial performance in 2014 and 2015. As a result we are announcing the loss of 300 roles in the UK business.
“With the continued strong growth in our international business, this will allow the group to return to modest growth in 2015.”
PR director Emma Harvey added: “Customer numbers are reducing so we are looking across all teams to ensure that we have got appropriate numbers to support our customers.
“We believe that the numbers will stabilise and we will then be in a position to start growing again. This is about trying to make the business sustainable and driving it forward.”
