ALMOST 20% of the latest job cuts announced by Lloyds Banking Group will hit posts in Scotland.
A spokesman for the bank confirmed that 117 roles in Scotland would face the axe from a total of 550 across the UK.
He added that it was not yet clear which locations in Scotland would be affected, but he said the Scottish cuts would be spread across group and its commercial, private and retail banking arms.
The announcement was attacked by the union Unite, which said it came on top of 1340 UK job losses announced in January.
The union said that while the bank continued to cut directly employed jobs, the group was still taking on more agency workers.
Unite national officer Dominic Hook said: "Lloyds cannot continue to cut now, then ask questions later. It's madness that the bank has so many agency workers when it's cutting so many permanent jobs.
"Lloyds is looking for a period of stability and growth, but it won't be achieved by continuous and damaging job cuts. The bank must put an end to mass redundancies and instead foster job security, pay workers fairly and concentrate on customer service."
Lloyds said the 550 job cuts were part of previously announced reductions, and they would try to shed the posts through staff redeployment and voluntary redundancy with compulsory redundancies as a "last resort".
In a statement, the bank said: "The group's policy is always to use natural turnover and to redeploy people wherever possible to retain their expertise and knowledge within the group.
"Compulsory redundancies will always be a last resort."
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