Marconi has announced up to 1,000 more jobs are to go at the troubled telecoms group.

There will be a three-month consultation to decide which jobs will be lost.

The Marconi workforce in Britain has been slashed by about 50 per cent in the past two years, with about 7,000 redundancies.

This new set of job losses will hit employees in the firm's Liverpool and Coventry plants hardest.

Director of communications David Beck said: "We told our workforce we were starting consultation on a further round of redundancies.

"We expect 1,000 further redundancies."

Marconi hoped most redundancies would be voluntary but would not rule out compulsory redundancies.

Amicus-AEEU said it would work to avoid any compulsory redundancies.

Danny Carrigan, Amicus-AEEU national officer for manufacturing, said: "This is obviously a real blow to our hopes of sustaining the workforce at current levels and underlines the very real market pressures that Marconi is under.

"We are determined to work in partnership with the company to do all we can to mitigate this news and to avoid any compulsory redundancies.

"The aim for both management and union, when we meet next week, must be to ensure that everything possible is done to avoid plant closures and sustain the long term future of what has been a great British company."

Last month, the beleaguered telecoms equipment maker unveiled a 22 per cent drop in quarterly sales and a £152 million cash loss.

Two years ago, Marconi employed about 15,000 people in the UK. Now that number will drop to around 7,000.