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Councillors in Caerphilly have been told to expect 600 job losses at the local authority, with no guarantee compulsory layoffs will be avoided.

A senior officer reiterated previous warnings the county borough council will need to trim its workforce due to financial pressures.

The council will aim to cushion the blow by not filling vacant posts or replacing workers who retire, but backbench councillors on the authority’s joint scrutiny committee were told the move could also mean changes to service delivery.

Penyrheol councillor Greg Ead, of Plaid Cymru, said a workforce report suggested the council was “haemorrhaging staff” and around one in four workers were over the age of 55 and would be “coming up to retirement”.

“We need to be future planning, and ensuring we’ve got succession plans in place and we’re actively recruiting for specialist staff,” he said.

Lynne Donovan, the council’s director of people services, said although workers were departing, “we have many staff that are joining the authority as well”.

But she warned that “one of the things we do have to bear in mind is we have to reduce the headcount within the authority”.

Ms Donovan said that 600-strong reduction would be in addition to those already “forecast and planned through the transformation programme” – the council’s cost-cutting project designed to modernise services.

“Every time we have a vacancy, as directors we all have to consider [whether] we actually need to fill that post,” she explained. “Just because somebody leaves, it doesn’t necessarily mean we would fill that post, or fill it with the same post.”

Cllr Kevin Etheridge, an independent councillor representing Blackwood, asked whether the council had received many expressions of interest from staff considering redundancy options.

Ms Donovan said the council hoped to trim the workforce “through a number of different options” including vacancy management, but had recently invited expressions of interest from “parts of the workforce”.

“I’m not sure whether we will achieve that 600 easily, but we have to make that reduction so we may have to look at how we provide services going forward,” she added. “But it’s continual work in progress that we’re looking at from a number of different angles.”

Cllr Etheridge sought a commitment the council would avoid compulsory layoffs.

“No, I can’t confirm that,” replied Ms Donovan. “We are looking constantly at how we can reduce the workforce but continue to provide services to the public.”

Potential redundancies would be a “disaster if we reduce our frontline workforce”, warned Cllr Nigel Dix.

“Are we looking at frontline services being affected, like highways, parks, the people who are out in the county borough doing the actual physical work?” he asked.

Ms Donovan said the council was “looking to protect our frontline workforce as [best] as we possibly can, but at the end of the day our frontline workforce needs to be managed and supervised as well”.

“We are looking at how we provide our services more efficiently wherever we possibly can,” she added. “But that decision about services that are provided is a decision for elected members.”

The 600 jobs figure was first raised by Cllr Sean Morgan in October 2024 when he led the local authority.

During a recent interview, his successor, Cllr Jamie Pritchard, downplayed the suggestion of 600 being a “strict target” but described wages as the council’s “biggest cost”.