Northern Rock completes redundancy programme

LONDON, Aug 29 (Reuters) - British bank Northern Rock, which was nationalised in February to avert collapse, said it would complete a round of job cuts on Friday aimed at shrinking its workforce by a third.

Northern Rock, taken into public ownership after the credit crunch cut off its main source of funding, said staff departures on Friday would mark the completion of a redundancy programme that has eliminated 1,300 jobs since March.

The redundancies, of which 800 were compulsory, along with 200 jobs lost through natural turnover, will reduce Northern Rock's workforce to 4,500 from 6,000 at the beginning of March.

The bank expects natural turnover to eliminate a further 500 jobs in the coming years, reducing its employee headcount to the targeted 4,000 level.

The job cuts form part of a recovery plan, launched in March, to remodel Northern Rock as a smaller lender and repay 25 billion pounds ($45.78 billion) in emergency support received from the Bank of England.

Newcastle-based Northern Rock said today it would sell or let new office space it was developing at Rainton Bridge near Sunderland and Gosforth in Newcastle as the premises were no longer needed. (Reporting by Myles Neligan, editing by Will Waterman)