British Gas Owner Cuts 800 Jobs In Three Months

The owner of British Gas, Centrica (LSE: CNA.L - news) , has cut 800 jobs in the first three months of the year.

The cull forms part of the 3,000 job-cuts Centrica had already scheduled for 2016.

The company is in the midst of a cost-cutting programme and last summer announced it would be slashing 6,000 jobs in an attempt to save £750m a year.

Centrica would not say where these most recent job cuts fell, but confirmed last summer that 5,000 of the 6,000 redundancies would be in the UK.

The company plans to deliver savings this year of £200m, and said in its trading update today that operating costs would be lower than the previous year.

It (Other OTC: ITGL - news) comes as the number of British Gas account holders fell by 1.5% in the first three months of the year, which equates to 224,000 customers leaving.

Centrica said was the result of long-term fixed-price contracts coming to an end. Competition is fierce between energy suppliers as customers are increasingly being encouraged to switch to find a better deal.

British Gas, which returned profit last year, announced three price drops last year, and its latest 5.1% fall came into effect in March, although domestic prices have not fallen as fast as wholesale.

The company's debt fell to £4.4bn in the January to March period.

It expects full year operating cash flow to be "in excess" of £2bn; last year it was £2.3bn.

Iain Conn, Centrica chief executive, said: "We continue to make good progress in implementing our strategy, and with improving levels of customer service, good operational performance, lower costs, and the launch of new products to help customers manage their energy usage, we remain on track to deliver against our 2016 targets (Other OTC: UBGXF - news) ."