UP to 400 job cuts are to be made at the defence research company QinetiQ and some of those will be from the firm's site in Malvern.

Approximately 2,000 people work at the 70-acre development in St Andrew's Road, a number which accounts for a quarter of QinetiQ's overall workforce in the UK.

The news comes just a week after the National Audit Office criticised the "excessive" £107.5m returns of QinetiQ's senior management when the company went private. The top 10 people had a return of almost 20,000 per cent.

David Luxton, national secretary for Prospect, the union for scientists and engineers, said he hoped voluntary redundancies would soften the blow but the news had still come as a shock.

He said: "The scale of the job losses has come as a shock and will present uncertainty to a lot of Malvern families over the Christmas period.

"This is down to the fact the Ministry of Defence has reduced its spending with QinetiQ, and there is a general support for restructuring of the business, but we weren't expecting this number of jobs to go."

Prospect expects some redundancies will happen by March next year and others in September although this has not been confirmed.

Mr Luxton added: "We want clarity as soon as possible as to where these jobs are going to be lost and we can work from there.

"Hopefully, most of these will go with voluntary redundancy, but we will have to wait to see."

Douglas Millard, press officer for QinetiQ, said: "All I can say at the moment is that QinetiQ is being worked into four main business streams and this will result in the roles of certain staff at various levels becoming uncertain."