Deloitte has cut about 250 employees

Deloitte has cut about 250 employees in the UK who were deemed to be underperforming, marking at least the third time in the past 13 months that the Big Four accounting and consulting firm has axed staff.

The firm embarked on a round of job cuts affecting staff across its advisory divisions in recent weeks without announcing them across the business or within individual service lines, people familiar with the matter told the Financial Times.

The latest cull targeted about 250 staffers, or 1 per cent of Deloitte’s UK workforce, and came as a result of the firm’s “performance management processes”, the people said.

The move comes less than a month after Deloitte announced that its 749 UK equity partners took home more than £1mn on average for a fourth straight year, despite the firm suffering a sharp slowdown in sales growth during its latest financial year.

Richard Houston, Deloitte’s UK senior partner and chief executive, said at the time that the firm had to “carefully consider our cost base and make some difficult choices this year”.