On Monday, a spokesman for Barclays Bank blamed the job losses on an internal reshuffle at Radbroke Hall.

"We combined a few departments about a year ago and we thought there would be a larger amount of jobs lost," said a spokesman.

"We have been going through an exercise to identify who is going to stay and who is going to go."

The job losses followed months of talks with staff and finance workers' union Unifi.

Contracts have not been renewed and there have been compulsory and voluntary redundancies.

Jobs lost include computer programmers and other experts in the IT department.

But on Monday the spokesman promised the firm would try to find them new positions within Barclays.

"It doesn't mean we are saying to them we don't want to see you again because we would really like to keep their skills in the organisation," she said.

There are currently 3,000 staff at Radbroke Hall which has been described as a 'major site for Barclays.'

But the latest losses follow a decision to axe 300 jobs in May 1999.

Then, employees heard the news on the radio as they drove to work.

On Monday, the spokesman could not say if more jobs would be lost.

"This was a particular project and a one-off so as far as this is concerned this is it," she said.

"We are a huge organisation and there could be other changes in the future that we are not working on at the moment."

A spokesman for Unifi was unavailable for comment this week.