SCORES of bank workers in the region are facing an uncertain future after Barclays said it was planning to move away from offering financial planning advice through its retail branches.

The move could lead to about 1,000 job losses and could affect up to 78 Barclays staff in the North-East, about 28 of them in branches and the rest based at a contact centre in Sunderland.

There were no offical figures available for North Yorkshire last night.

Customers were increasingly buying and managing their investments online, said Barclays, adding it was proposing to offer retail investment services solely online.

The bank said that if it went ahead with the proposals it would look to redeploy as many of the staff as possible to other roles.

Rob MacGregor, national officer of union Unite, said: “Barclays management should hang their heads in shame as 1,000 hard-working staff are told they no longer have a job at the bank.”