capita

Outsourcing giant Capita has announced plans to axe up to 900 jobs in a bid to slash costs.

The company, which collects the BBC TV licence fee, said the plans will help it save £60m a year from the first quarter of 2024.

Bosses said the cuts would mainly hit “indirect support function and overhead roles”.

Despite the redundancies, Capita said it “continues to trade in line with its expectations” having secured contracts worth £2.9bn so far, ahead of its total of £2.6bn for 2022.

Chief executive Jon Lewis said: “We are, today, announcing the accelerated delivery of the efficiency savings announced in our half-year results with a £20m increase in overhead cost reduction to £60m on an annualised basis from Q1 2024.

“As part of the organisational review which underpins the programme we are announcing today, we continue to identify further areas of cost efficiency and will pursue these during 2024.”

Capita, which also runs outsourced IT services for substantial parts of the NHS, posted a pre-tax loss of £67.9m for the first six months of the year, compared with a profit of £100,000 a year earlier.

Its share price has fallen more than 40pc in the last six months, having revealed in August that the cleanup costs from a Russian cyber attack would be up to £25m.

Capita was targeted by a ransomware group earlier this year, which hacked its Microsoft Office 365 software and accessed the personal data of staff and dozens of clients.

In addition to costs related to the cyber attack, Capita said the loss was driven by business exits and write-downs on the value of some of its divisions.

The announcement of job cuts comes a day after it announced it had secured a new contract to manage the Civil Service Pension Scheme.

The professional services business will take on the management of the scheme for the Government from September 2025 in a deal with £239m over 10 years.

Capita also holds a £456m contract to collect and enforce the BBC TV licence fee and runs military recruiting processes for the Ministry of Defence.