Scotland Yard has employed a "kettling manager" ahead of an anti-cuts protest this month and has received intelligence that "troublemakers" plan to infiltrate it.

Met officers are working on plans to avoid the violence that marred student protests last year and are poised to request assistance from neighbouring forces.

The TUC, which is organising the demonstration against public spending cuts on 26 March, is working with Scotland Yard. Both insist they expect the protest to be peaceful. The TUC is planning for up to 200,000 marchers.

The TUC will provide 2,500 stewards and 300 senior stewards. Carl Roper, the chief steward, told MPs on Tuesday that the volunteer stewards would get police guidance on how to defuse conflicts, to delay officers getting involved and "ratcheting up the tension". Volunteers will not be asked to deal with violence but are being trained to cope with sit-down protests.

Lynne Owens, assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan police, told the joint parliamentary committee on human rights, which is investigating the policing of demonstrations, that a "containment manager" has been employed to oversee the kettling of protesters. She refused to say whether undercover officers would be deployed to monitor the march, saying it could compromise their security.

She said that there was "early intelligence" that some "troublemakers" were preparing to hijack the march.

"Containment is only used where there had been violence or where there is imminent violence. You would expect us to plan for a whole range of eventualities including violence," said Owens, who is tipped as a future commissioner.

"Our absolute hope is people will come peacefully ... but there is a public expectation that if there is violence on the streets of London we will react robustly."

The new plans include:

• Attempting to shorten the duration of kettles by identifying troublemakers more quickly. Officers could be given more powers to exercise their own judgment over when to release protesters.

• Leaflets will inform people of the official march route. Met officers will put out announcements on Twitter, countering any false rumours. Loudhailers are being abandoned after officers found themselves drowned out by crowds.

• The TUC and Met have jointly invited the campaign group Liberty to provide independent observers at the event.

• The TUC will have a desk in the Met central operation room as will Liberty. Met police will have access to the TUC's radio system to issue guidance to the volunteer stewards on the march route.

• Protesters are being bussed into Wembley, the ExCel Arena and Battersea power station and will take prescribed tube routes to the meeting point at Embankment.

Nigel Stanley, head of campaigns at the TUC, told the committee that the event is intended to be family-friendly. He said that if there were attempts to disrupt the peaceful march and rally in Hyde Park, he believed there would be much more opposition from the rest of the crowd than happened at the student protests. TUC analysis suggested that peaceful protesters at those demos were encouraged to turn violent by a hard core of individuals.