Around 120 jobs are under threat at Halifax’s mortgage operations in Belfast as part of a fresh wave of cuts announced by the Lloyds Banking Group.

Lloyds yesterday said it plans to axe a massive 5,000 jobs from its group operations, insurance and retail divisions by the end of the year to reduce costs.

After the release of contractors, temporary staff and offshore personnel it said there would be a net reduction of about 2,600 permanent jobs across the UK.

Halifax said it anticipates that 120 roles at its offices in the Gasworks would be affected, but stressed that the majority would be redeployed to other roles in the Belfast area.

“It’s important to remember that we retain a significant presence in the region and will always look to redeploy potentially impacted colleagues. As always our preference is to manage role reductions through natural turnover, redeployment and voluntary redundancy,” a spokesman said.

“In October 2010, the work carried out by the mortgage operations team in Belfast will be transferred to other sites within the group. The majority of impacted mortgage operations colleagues will be offered redeploy- ment opportunities within the Belfast area.

“However, due to geographical considerations, it is expected that a small number of colleagues will leave the group as a result of these changes.”

The spokesman said that more than 1,000 staff will continue to be based at the Gasworks.

The latest job losses at Lloyds follow thousands already cut this year.

The bank said it is committed to working through the changes with employees “carefully and sensitively” and that all affected workers were briefed by line managers. It said the unions Accord, LTU and Unite were consulted prior to the announcement.

Rob MacGregor, national officer of the Unite union, said the job losses demonstrated the “depth of corporate arrogance” within the taxpayer-supported bank.

“This country’s financial sector should be looking towards the future, rather than continuing to slash jobs without proper consideration of how to rebuild the public’s confidence in our tarnished banking sector,” said Mr MacGregor.

The UK “superbank” formed by Lloyds’ takeover of HBOS was designed to stave off the nationalisation of ailing HBOS, and created a giant with 3,000 branches, 22 million current accounts and 27% of gross mortgage lending.

Lloyds believed the takeover was a good long-term bet, but the toxic baggage brought by HBOS’s reckless lending and the impact of recession on its loan book has seen the Government take a 43% stake.