Fujitsu Services, the UK arm of of the Japanese technology company, has announced plans to cut around 1,200 jobs, about 10 per cent of its workforce, in one of the largest rounds of redundancies in the IT industry in the recession.

The cuts indicate that IT, which has hitherto avoided widespread redundancies affecting other industry, is being affected by the slowdown and undermined recent reports that suggested the IT sector was helping to lead the UK out of the downturn.