Grant Thornton is planning to cut 225 jobs, around 5% of its workforce, in response to an expected slowdown in growth at the mid-tier accounting firm next year.

Most of the staff affected, including a number of partners, were told their jobs were at risk earlier this month, a Grant Thornton spokesman told Accountancy Age.

'As with most of our competitors, Big Four and beyond, we have been conducting a review of our business across all business units,' he said. 'We looked at the fee income for next year and tried to match that with the number of staff.'

There are no further cuts planned at the moment he added, despite the uncertain economic conditions which are set to carry on deep into 2009.

The planned job cuts are the biggest to be openly announced by a leading firm. In May KPMG shed around 90 staff from its corporate finance and transaction service teams in one of the first signs that the credit crunch was hitting the profession.

The Grant Thornton spokesman added that it is trying to offer affected staff secondments or the chance to take a career break.

However, staff who are judged not to be suitable for redeployment will face redundancy.