BLAME for the planned job cuts at Swindon Borough Council has been placed at the door of the government in Westminster.

The council needs to save £30m over the next £30 months. On Monday it was revealed that £14m of that will come from a major jobs cull with 15 per cent of staff, or around 420 roles, at risk.

UNISON, the trade union that represents the majority of council workers, has slammed the government for removing funding from local authorities at a time when the demand on statutory services is continuing to increase.

Karla Bradford, secretary at UNISON’s Euclid Street branch, described the scale of the financial challenge as “absolutely horrendous”.

“Every year we’ve had to return savings which has a knock on impact on services,” she said.

“Over the past 10 years we’ve had to find £14m of savings and have had job cuts every year - last year we lost 100 people.

“10 years ago we had a head count of around 5,000 to 6,000 staff. Now we’re down to around 2,800.

“Taking a further 350 to 500 staff out will have a very significant impact. Our members are saying they have already been cut to the bone.

“We don’t like it, but the money has to come from somewhere. We’ve been arguing for years about Swindon’s funding - whether it be schools or council, we’ve never had a fair deal.”

UNISON has been in talks with council bosses but as yet there is not enough detail in the plans to suggest exactly where the axe will fall.

There has, however, been a commitment from the council to engage in comprehensive re-skilling alongside any redundancy programme.

The deputy leader of the Swindon Labour group, Steve Allsopp, also took aim at central government policy for its role in creating the conditions prompting such significant job cuts.

“The effects of the government’s failed austerity is biting Swindon Borough Council like never before,” said Coun Allsopp. “While we have strong concerns about the effects of these job cuts, we do recognise that in order to set a legal budget, council cuts will have to be made while we have the current government in place.”

The council has identified commercialisation - using council assets to generate income - as a key strand of the transformation work needed between now and 2020.

But Coun Allsopp called on his Conservative counterparts to do more, more quickly.

“The council should be doing more to maximise income it can get in order to mitigate cuts,” he said. “They have been very slow in building and selling homes on council land to bring back a profit on those properties.”

He expressed concern about how an increased emphasis on using technology in place of staff - particularly in public facing roles - would impact on service levels.

“The plans the Conservative administration have set out will lead to a fundamentally different council - while people have been paying more, they’ll be getting less.

“Residents will find it harder to speak to council officers because the frontline will have reduced and people will be expected to interact with the council online. It will also mean some council services reducing, taking longer for the council to fulfil its functions.

“Every staff member made redundant is a tragedy for that person and we would implore the council to do all it can to avoid compulsory redundancies. They should be doing all they can to redeploy staff and if necessary re-skill them.”