Accountants and business consultants Grant Thornton are to close their Witney office as part of a restructuring exercise.

The 25 staff working at the office will move to the partnership's other two offices in the county in Oxford and Banbury and be known under the combined banner of the Oxfordshire office.

Head of the Oxfordshire team will be Jeremy Lewis, who has been managing partner of the Banbury and Witney offices for several years. Stephen Dexter becomes senior partner.

Mr Lewis said: "The restructuring exercise means that we will be employing five more people in the county, bringing the total to 150 of whom about 60 will work in Banbury."

The company has 230 partners nationwide working in 42 offices.

Mr Lewis said that the closure of the Witney office was necessary as clients were demanding more expertise and fewer but bigger units were now necessary.

He said that Oxfordshire was an ideal county for Grant Thornton as none of the "Big Five" firms of accountants (KPMG, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte & Touche, Ernst Young, and Arthur Andersen) were here.

He added: "We tend to work with small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) - owner-managed businesses that are not big enough to have their own financial directors."

Grant Thornton (www. grantthorton.co.uk) is also linking up with Oxford Innovation (www.oxin.co.uk), which provides premises and flexible services to new companies, to offer a package of services for people starting technology businesses.