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Nearly 2,800 jobs could be cut at the BBC as part of cost-reduction plans to be announced next week.

With the corporation already in turmoil due to being embroiled in the recent phone-in scandal, the redundancies promise a further decline in BBC morale.

BBC1 controller Peter Fincham resigned on Friday due to the alleged doctoring of preview footage for the documentary A Year With The Queen and now director general Mark Thompson is expected to announce a 12 per cent reduction in the BBC's 23,000 workforce.

A BBC spokeswoman confirmed the licence fee settlement was not as large as anticipated but could not confirm how this would affect Mr Thompson's presentation to the BBC Trust on Wednesday.

"We have been told the licence fee settlement is not as large as we had bid for and therefore we have to look again at our plans for the future and reprioritise the work we plan to do," she said.

But Helen Ryan, a representative of the broadcasters' union Bectu, told the Independent that staff were bracing themselves for job losses.

"We are braced for quite savage cuts," she commented. "The BBC has been clear that every area has to make savings, so programme-making as well as newsrooms could be affected."

Many BBC insiders believe that factual-programming departments - responsible for shows such as Planet Earth and Top Gear - could be the hardest hit as Mr Thompson tries to reduce the corporation's annual budget by around six per cent.