UK business process and IT outsourcing services giant Serco plans to cut around 500 jobs in the UK as it streamlines its management structure and consolidates its own shared back-office services.

The move follows a number of acquisitions by the company. Last year, acquired UK-based call centre outsourcing company The Listening Company, Indian BPO provider Intelenet and Australian contact centre service provider Excelior.

Serco, which now employs around 100,000 people around the world, said that it will cut 500 jobs as a result of the restructuring. A spokesperson for the company told Information Age that these job cuts take place "mainly" in the UK.

The company simultaneously announced an organisational restructuring of its BPO  arm to create a ‘global capability’. "We are bringing all of BPO units into one part of the business", explained the Serco spokesperson. It is too early to say how this will effect the geographical location of jobs.

Serco offers a broad range of services to both public and private sector clients. Today, for example, it signed a new £55 million contract to provide pre-deployment training to the British Army.  

"Serco will provide critical pre-deployment training including essential language, culture and operational environment skills, and will create realistic training conditions to prepare UK military forces for deployed operations primarily in Afghanistan," the company said in a statement. It also operates London’s bicycle hire scheme.

The company is also becoming an increasingly dominant force in IT outsourcing. Last month, it emerged as the single remaining bidder for a contract to provide shared ICT services to five NHS Trusts.

Last year, it said that it was ‘encouraged’ by growing opportunities in the US "in areas such as IT infrastructure, cybersecurity… and energy efficient IT".

In its most recent interim statement, the company claimed to have a pipeline of contracts worth £29 billion.