Scotland's councils expect 10,000 job losses

Ten Scottish councils expect to cut 10,000 jobs between them over the next few years, BBC Scotland has learned.

The figures emerged after BBC Scotland approached all 32 councils in Scotland to ask about anticipated job losses.

Some of the biggest losses are expected in North Ayrshire - which expects to have 1,000 fewer staff - and Glasgow, which confirmed it was on the way to losing 2,800 posts.

None of the councils surveyed said they were planning compulsory redundancies.

The local authorities said they hoped the savings would happen through natural turnover, retirement and voluntary redundancy.

Several councils, including Edinburgh and East Lothian said they planned to reduce staffing costs by 12% over three years but did not confirm specific job figures.

Only two councils - Inverclyde and Shetland - did not provide responses to the survey.

Tough budgets

The 32 councils still do not know exactly how much money they will have next year.

But they are all anticipating cuts in real terms - in other words their budgets will be smaller once inflation is factored into the equation.

As a broad rule of thumb, about 80p of every pound they spend comes from the Scottish government although the exact amount varies from council to council.

Meanwhile the Scottish government - which currently gets all its funding from Westminster - has to decide how much it can afford to give councils.

Since the SNP government and councils agreed to freeze the council tax for three years in 2007, the proportion of each council's money which comes from the government has risen.

They have received more from the government each year but council tax receipts have been essentially static.

All expect tough budgets but only ten of them were able to say just now how they expect their staff numbers to change.