Royal Bank of Scotland will axe 1,000 IT support roles in the UK as part of its latest round of redundancies.

The job losses are a direct result of the sale of 318 branches to Spanish banking conglomorate Santander and the closure of 12 UK support centres.

The bank has laid off around 15,000 staff since it was bailed out by the government at the height of financial crisis two years ago. "Having to cut jobs is the most difficult part of our work to rebuild RBS and repay taxpayers for their support," the bank said in a statement.

RBS announced in May that it would be offshoring around 500 non-customer facing support roles, although it is has not said whether these are IT-related. "It will be a specially bitter pill for staff to swallow as RBS has decided to move some of the jobs abroad to the Far East, India and America," commented Rob MacGregor, an officer at RBS employees union Unite.