Following speculation on Friday that Barkers Scotland had closed, its was announced earlier today that Barkers Group Limited had been taken into administration and then purchased by Penna plc.

The £8.6million deal includes all of the group and TCS and will the 240 Barkers employees currently in employment, offered the same terms and conditions they previously worked under.

The agency also holds offices in Birmingham, Manchester,  Leeds, Bristol and Slough.

This is unlikely to affect the Scottish running of the business which is understood to have made all but five members of staff in its Edinburgh recruitment division redundant.

The business is expected to now trade as Penna Barkers.

Gary Browning, chief executive of Penna, said: "We are proud to be associated with such an established and distinguished brand, and look forward to complementing Barkers' skills with the breadth of a successful HR consulting group which gained 6th place in this year’s Sunday Times 100 Best Companies to Work For" rankings. He added that, given Penna's wider offering, the proposition for clients should be a very attractive one."

A spokesperson for Penna told The Drum that the company was aware that redundancies had been made by Barkers before the deal was concluded and that the focus was mainly on the growth of the recruitment business.

Penna is understood to already have offices in Scotland, although it is believed that neither of these specialise in the recruitment communications field.

No decision has yet been made at to the survival of the Barkers brand while the Scottish Government has yet to comment as to what will happen with the holes that the agency leaves on the Marketing Services Framework.