BT is slashing a further 6,000 jobs as part of a total cull of 10,000 by the end of March.

The telecoms giant revealed today it has already shed 4,000 jobs, and the rest would go by the end of March.

The company has large operations across the county, principally in offices in Sevenoaks and Canterbury.

But it has said it does not yet know if the decision will affect the county, where it has around 2,000 staff.

A spokeswoman said the job losses, which mainly involve agency and contracting staff, would be global and it was not possible to say whether there would be any impact on the Kent workforce.

She said: "The jobs to go will be peppered around the world, rather than concentrated in a few areas. Direct staff reductions will be achieved through voluntary schemes and not replacing people who retire or leave the business."

She added that customer service was BT’s number one priority and a lot of the jobs to go would be background roles such as IT support.

In a statement announcing second quarter results, BT said it had achieved three-month savings of £161m. "As part of our ongoing efficiency programmes, we expect to reduce our total labour resource by some 10,000 by the end of the current financial year, the majority of which will be in the area of indirect labour, including agency, contractors, subcontractors and offshore workers."

The business claimed the job losses were not due to the economic downturn but part of ongoing cost savings.

The decision was announced just 24 hours after the UK jobless figure soared to 1.82 million, the highest figure in 10 years. In Kent and Medway, unemployment went up by 657 to 19,850, making a two-month total of nearly 1,200.

BT’s revenue rose by four per cent to £5.3 billion, but pre-tax profits fell 11 per cent to £590m. Revenue from small and medium sized UK businesses rose by three per cent to £660 million.

BT said it was the UK’s number one retail broadband provider with 4.6m customers. But revenue from consumers dipped four per cent to £1.2bn, mainly due to lower call and line revenue.