Royal Dutch Shell unveils plans to close three UK offices and axe 1,600 staff

Oil giant Royal Dutch Shell has unveiled plans to close three of it's offices in the UK, a move which will affect approximately 1,600 employees, it was reported on 25 April.

The first of the three offices set to be shut is BG's headquarters in Reading, which will close by the end of 2016. The 800 employees at the Reading-based site will be offered the chance to move to Shell's headquarters in central London.

The Anglo-Dutch company, which acquired sector peer BG in February for £35bn (€45bn, $50.6bn), will also close BG's offices based at Albyn Place in Aberdeen this year and move BG's 300-strong force into its offices in the city.

The FTSE 100-listed company also said its Brabazon House office in Manchester, which houses 500 people, will be closed by the end of 2017.

Meanwhile, Shell added it has begun a voluntary redundancy programme as it seeks to cut 10,300 jobs across the two merged companies, in a bid to cut costs and fight the decline in oil prices that saw crude oil plunged to multi-year lows earlier this year.

Of the planned job cuts, 7,500 positions will go within Shell, with the remaining 2,800 to be axed from BG's operations.

"This [voluntary redundancy programme] is in the context of the reality of a lower for longer oil price environment, and is not exclusively related to the Shell-BG combination," the company said in a statement.

"A similar proposal was communicated to Shell staff in the Netherlands earlier this month."

Shell said the programme will be offered to employees unwilling to relocate. However, only employees across its upstream – exploration and production – and technology businesses will be able to be included in the scheme, which will not be offered to workers in Shell's fuel sales operations.