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Neil Fitzsimmons, chief executive of Redrow, has said the housebuilder has cut its workforce by 15% as a result of the credit crunch.

Speaking after the company鈥檚 profit warning on Tuesday, Fitzsimmons said it had also put a freeze on recruitment.

Last June Redrow had 1,372 employees, which means more than 200 jobs have since been cut.

Although Fitzsimmons did not reveal which sites had closed as a result of the cuts, he confirmed that the Exeter office had shut after a merger with the Bristol operation.

In the trading update Redrow said housing reservations were half the level of last year, after a sharp downturn since February.

A company statement said: 鈥淭he trading environment has deteriorated to an even greater extent than we anticipated at the time of our interim results.鈥�

The warning followed recent figures from the Home Builders Federation that revealed a 66% fall in reservation levels at the end of April.

Fitzsimmons said the key to solving the problem was mortgages. He said: 鈥淭he desire to buy is there but life is difficult for the first-time buyers that oil the wheels of the market.鈥�

He denied that the company had pulled out of the land market as a result of the downturn. 鈥淭o say that would be an overstatement. What we are doing is taking a very cautious view.鈥�

And he refused to reveal what institutional investor Toscafund was planning to do with the 17% stake it had built in the company over the past two months. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 between us and them,鈥� he said.

Meanwhile, Galliford Try was forced to issue a profit warning after a 鈥渇urther sharp deterioration in recent weeks鈥� in its housing division. Despite a strong performance in the construction arm, it said pre-tax profit for the year ended 30 June 2008 would be 鈥渘o less than 拢60m鈥�, which is 拢16m below consensus forecasts.