British Gas owner cuts 1,300 jobs, cites shift to chatbots
TL;DR:
- Centrica, British Gas’s FTSE 100 owner, will cut 1,300 call-centre jobs — 800 fresh cuts on top of 500 confirmed last month — a 14% reduction across six UK sites.
- Chief executive Chris O’Shea insists AI is not the main driver: over 90% of customers now use digital channels first, and calls have fallen 20%.
- Unions counter that the company’s AI investment is handing “hundreds of human jobs” to chatbots.
British Gas’s owner has become the latest large UK employer to tie workforce cuts to a “targeted deployment of AI tools”. The reductions span customer-service teams in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Cardiff, Leicester, Stockport and Leeds, and will run over two years, with some roles left unfilled after resignations and the balance coming through redundancy.
Preference or pretext?
O’Shea was careful to separate cause from tool. “AI isn’t driving these particular job reductions; that’s mainly due to changing customer behaviour,” he said, pointing to the 20% drop in calls. Trade unions read it differently, framing the cuts as automation dressed up as consumer choice. The distinction matters beyond Centrica: staffing giant Adecco recently warned that some firms blame AI for layoffs actually driven by weaker trading or restructuring.
The commercial backdrop complicates the “customer preference” story. Centrica’s retail profits rose to £346m in the first half, up from £338m, even as British Gas domestic customers slipped to 7.45 million from 7.5 million — the supplier is chasing margin over volume. It also faces a settlement of up to £112m over force-fitted prepayment meters.
Looking forward
The cuts land in a fraught UK jobs debate, where early labour-market data on whether AI augments or replaces remains mixed and the Mayor of London has backed a £30m taskforce to shield roles. Whether other utilities and banks follow Centrica’s framing — attrition plus redundancy, justified by digital uptake — will shape how much political heat “customer behaviour” can absorb.