Bradford & Bingley insisted yesterday that buy-to-let mortgages were showing "sustainable growth" in spite of concerns that it could be hit by a slowdown in the home loans market.

Steven Crawshaw, chief executive of the bank, said buy-to-let growth would slow from the 60% compound annual growth of the past five years. But he predicted that it would still grow faster than the 12% achieved in the overall mortgage market.

B&B has a 22% share of the buy-to-let market and is expanding in other areas such as equity release. Recent data from the Council of Mortgage Lenders showed an 18% fall in the number of people buying homes to let.

Mr Crawshaw has started restructuring the bank, selling five non-core businesses including the broker Charcol last year at a loss of £123m.

As a result, pre-tax profits in 2004 fell £159m to £105m. This included exceptional costs of £52m, which included £37m put aside for possible redress for previous mis-selling of products such as precipice bonds and endowments.

Staff numbers at the bank fell from 7,451 to 3,152. Most of this fall was the result of selling the unwanted business but the core business reduced job numbers by more than 600.

Mr Crawshaw expects there to be a total of about 3,000 employees by the end of this year, largely through natural wastage, as he tries to save £40m a year by 2006.

He took over last March and said yesterday he was not "dressing up" B&B for sale, despite his efforts to streamline the business.

"If somebody walks through the door with a cheque that will clear, I have a duty to assess it," he said. But that had been the situation since B&B floated on the stock market five years ago, he said. "We do not spend a lot of time worrying about [a takeover approach]," he added.

The bank's provision for bad and doubtful debts fell to £2m from £6.6m. It will pay a dividend of 17.1p, a rise of 4%.

Analysts at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods said: "The results were in line with our expectations. The company delivered on the expected good cost control and sound credit quality and - unsurprisingly - positive comments continued to be made on the buy-to-let market. Negatives included heavy restructuring costs."

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