Scottish Power to axe 70 sales and marketing jobs

Utilities provider Scottish Power is to axe 70 positions in its sales and marketing departments as part of 450 job losses announced last week.

A spokesman for the company says there are no plans to force employees to step down. He says that the cull will be achieved by voluntary redundancies and by not filling posts that become vacant, adding that there is no indication of which posts will go.

There is no suggestion yet that the cuts will reach the top of the marketing department, but when Scottish Power chief executive Ian Russell embarked on the rationalisation programme, board-level executives were the first to feel the impact.

Charles Berry, executive director of the UK division, and David Nish, executive director of the infrastructure division, left after their roles were scrapped. Corporate communications director Dominic Fry and group human resources director Mike Pittman also left the company as soon as the restructure was announced.

Scottish Power, which says it will save &£60m a year as a result of the cuts, has come under attack from unions over the job losses. The rationalisation follows the company’s decision to offload US business PacifiCorp earlier this year.

This week, Scottish Power said that its UK businesses had performed well in the second quarter and the $9.4bn (&£5.3bn) sale of PacifiCorp was on schedule.

Scottish Power, which last week was the latest energy supplier to hike its prices, is being linked to a takeover by German utility giant EON.