THOUSANDS of staff at nationalised lender Northern Rock are to receive bonuses of up to £3,000 each, with several senior managers in line to get at least £25,000, it was revealed yesterday.

The announcement came as Newcastle-based Northern Rock revealed a pre-tax loss of £257m for last year, significantly reduced from the £1.36bn deficit the year before.

Northern Rock, which completed its restructure into good and bad bank at the turn of the year, said the bonus payment came after staff met agreed objectives over the year, but denied it was spending £14.9m of taxpayers’ money to reward failure.

Chief executive Gary Hoffman said that while it was right much of the improvement went to the taxpayer, some should go to the lender’s workers, who have helped rebuild the bank, the majority of whom work in its Gosforth headquarters and on Wearside, and are on annual salaries of between £20,000 and £25,000.

He said: “There is no reward for failure. I understand that we are still loss-making, but we have beaten the target and we have substantially improved financially.

“Northern Rock has turned a corner and it certainly feels a very different place to where we were just a year ago.”

Mr Hoffman said he had waived his entitlement to a £700,000 bonus, but 32 senior staff will receive one-off rewards of £25,000 or more.

Senior management will receive their 2009 bonuses in three equal annual instalments, beginning this month, and will be subject to clawback under the Chancellor’s one-off windfall tax rules.

Mr Hoffman said the bank’s results – the last for the old Northern Rock company, which was split into two separate businesses on January 1 – were encouraging, with underlying pre-tax losses of £383.3m, bettering Government targets by £500m.

He said that unemployment and house prices would remain key in determining loan impairments in the future, but he said there had been signs of improvement in both areas towards the end of last year.

Charges for soured loans were £1.04bn for the full year as unemployment and falling house prices took their toll, but Northern Rock said improving economic trends reduced the level of impairments in the second half.

Northern Rock said the number of its mortgages in arrears continued to rise, but the rate of increase slowed during the third quarter and has stabilised, reflecting debt management efforts and better affordability because of low interest rates.

At the end of the year, 4.28 per cent of its portfolio was more than three months behind with payments, compared with 2.92 per cent a year before. The industry average was 2.38 per cent in December.

Mr Hoffman said: “The restructured business is now well placed to move forward.

We remain committed to delivering the highest standards of service to all our customers, including those customers facing financial difficulty.

“This final set of results for the former Northern Rock demonstrates some encouraging trends. We are on the right trajectory and this is credit to the hard work and dedication of all our employees.”