The Bank of England has made staff retention one of its top priorities this year to stem the flow of defections to better-paid jobs at private sector companies in the City of London's financial district.

More than an eighth of the Bank's 1,836 staff left in the course of the 12 months to the end of February, with nearly three-quarters of those departures unrelated to redundancies or restructuring initiatives at the Bank, according to its annual report published yesterday.