British Gas owner Centrica has lined up 4,000 job cuts by 2020, it has announced.

The firm, which has a plant in Barrow, has blamed political intervention and the loss of energy customers in the UK for helping push annual profits down 17 per cent.

The company's UK business division suffered a 92 per cent fall in adjusted operating profit to just £4 million for the full year to December 31, while its UK home arm managed a one per cent rise to £819 million.

It compounded pain caused by a drop in its North American business unit, resulting in a 17 per cent fall in group adjusted operating profits to £1.25 billion, although on a statutory basis, operating profits plunged 80 per cent to £486 million.

Centrica said political meddling in the UK energy market had impacted its performance.

Group chief executive Iain Conn said: "The combination of political and regulatory intervention in the UK energy market, concerns over the loss of energy customers in the UK, and the performance issue in North America have created material uncertainty around Centrica and, although we delivered on our financial targets for the year, this resulted in a very poor shareholder experience.

"We regret this deeply, and I am determined to restore shareholder value and confidence."

The firm said a cost efficiency programme would aim to save £1.25bn per annum by 2020 and would be delivered via more digitisation for customers – including more self-service – simplification of business processes, improvement in functional costsand supply chain savings.

It added: "Overall, we expect the new programme to involve reduction in like-for-like headcount of around 4,000 by 2020, with around 1,000 additional roles expected to be created in Connected Home, DE&P and EM&T between 2018 and 2020."

The total number of customer accounts at its UK home division slumped six per cent to around 20.3 million, while its UK business unit saw a nine per cent drop to 653,000.