Npower confirms 2,400 job losses

Energy firm Npower has confirmed it is cutting 2,400 jobs in the UK after losing 351,000 customers in 2015.

The "big six" energy firm has been plagued by customer complaints over billing and in December was fined, by the energy industry's regulator, a record £26m for those problems.
Npower lost €137m (£106m) last year, compared with €227m profit in 2014.
Its parent company, Germany's RWE, warned that billing issues at Npower would continue throughout 2016.
Npower said the job losses would be among both its directly employed staff and contractors.
It currently employs 11,500 people in the UK, of which 6,668 are full time posts.

'Too much, too soon'

Npower described its annual results as "extremely disappointing" and announced the start of a two-year programme to "simplify its business processes".
"They [the results] show a business that tried to do too much, too soon while not focusing enough on the fundamentals in a constantly changing market. This led to over complicated processes and procedures resulting in unhappy customers, too many complaints and extra costs to put things right, " Paul Coffey, chief executive of Npower said.
But RWE also blamed government schemes to make homes more energy efficient for the "weakening our market share".
"Under Energy Company Obligation major UK energy firms such as Npower are obliged to finance measures to increase the energy efficiency of households and are therefore at a cost disadvantage compared to smaller providers, which do not have such obligations", the company said.

Workers 'paying the price'

Before the job losses were confirmed union officials warned they would deal a "devastating blow" to the company's workforce and to communities across the country.
"Npower has been in trouble for some time thanks to poor decision-making at the very top, and workers are now paying the price," said Unison general secretary Dave Prentis.
"The company's failure to invest properly in new systems has left it with one of the worst customer service records in the business.
"The news suggests that Npower's German owner isn't terribly committed to its UK operations. Cutting a fifth of the workforce will leave the already struggling business in an even worse state. Now months of uncertainly lie ahead for a workforce whose morale is already at rock bottom."
RWE announced a €637m (£493m) annual group loss, compared with a profit of €2.2bn a year earlier.
It blamed the slump in earnings on a series of write downs in the value of its UK and German power plants amounting to €2.1bn in 2015.
They had resulted from the collapse in commodity prices and, in particular, the ongoing depression in the price of coal that had caused German wholesale electricity prices to plummet, RWE said.
In the UK, RWE wrote down £450m of assets, leading its power generation business into a annual loss of £55m.
Npower's main plants in the UK are in Pembroke and Aberthaw in Wales and Staythorpe in Nottinghamshire.