BARCLAYS staff in Dorset are waiting to see whether its latest announcement of thousands of job cuts will affect them.

The bank announced yesterday that it was cutting 7,000 jobs from its investment banking division by 2016.

Although those job losses are not expected to have a direct impact locally, they are part of a wider strategic review of the bank.

And it has been reported that Barclays could close up to 400 branches over the next four years, although they were not part of yesterday’s announcement.

Barclays employs more than 1,000 people at its Barclays House operation in Poole, which has seen hundreds of job losses in recent years.

It has six branches in Bournemouth and seven in Poole, as well as branches in Wareham, Blandford, Wimborne, Sturminster Newton and Sherborne.

Its retail banking arm employs 32,900 people in the UK and around 5,900 in Europe.

A spokesperson for Barclays in the south west said of the announcement: “It’s too soon to say what impact there will be in the region or locally.”

Yesterday’s announcement means there will be 14,000 job losses across the group this year rather than the 12,000 previously announced. It brings the total job cuts by 2016 to 19,000.

Chief executive Antony Jenkins described the strategy review of the business as a “bold simplification” of Barclays.

The bank’s European retail banking business will be hived off into a so-called “bad bank” comprising £115bn of “non-core assets”.

The non-core unit groups together assets which do not fit the bank’s “strategic objectives” or profitability criteria and the bank will “look to exit or run down these assets over time”, it said.

Mr Jenkins said: “This is a bold simplification of Barclays. We will be a focused international bank, operating only in areas where we have capability, scale and competitive advantage.

“In the future, Barclays will be leaner, stronger, much better balanced and well-positioned to deliver lower volatility, higher returns and growth.”

Dominic Hook, Unite national officer, said: “These have been extraordinarily turbulent times for ordinary Barclays workers who have worked hard to keep the bank on track against a backdrop of continued uncertainty and redundancies.”