Management overhaul at British Gas

Centrica has announced a restructure and management overhaul of British Gas, reducing three business units to two.

From April 2016, British Gas Residential, British Gas Services and British Gas Business will become UK Home and UK Business, reflecting Centrica’s structure in North America. They will continue to trade mainly under the British Gas brand.

Centrica announced a major restructure of the business last year, with up to 6000 jobs to go and 2000 jobs to be created, leading to an overall reduction in headcount of 4000. The company would not give any further details on job losses at this stage, but an update is expected when it reports its preliminary full year results in February.

UK Home will be led by Sarwjit Sambhi who has been at Centrica for nearly 15 years in a variety of roles including group strategy, power generation, and most recently as managing director of Centrica’s Exploration and Production (E&P) business.

Following his departure, E&P will be led by Chris Cox who joins Centrica from BG Group where, until early 2015, he was executive vice president BG Advance, responsible for all technical functions, capital projects, well delivery, IT and reserves.

Charles Cameron has joined Centrica from BP as group director for technology and engineering.

Centrica chief executive Iain Conn said: “With great brands, products and innovative offerings Centrica is very well-positioned to meet the changing needs of our customers. Repositioning our customer-facing businesses around our principal customer segments is a fundamental and important step. We are also focused on giving those customers access to new products and technologies such as HIVE and distributed energy offerings. We are taking steps to increase the efficiency of the company materially, and working to strengthen our E&P business in the face of weak commodity prices. Such changes require strong leadership and I am confident that Sarwjit, Chris and Charles will help us to achieve our full potential.”