STAFF numbers at one of Southampton's oldest buildings have been reduced.

Empty job posts at Tudor House will be removed while city heritage bosses plan to recruit volunteers to help run the venue instead.

But local historians are angry at the decision, and say that experts should fill the roles, not volunteers.

Southampton history enthusiast Genevieve Bailey, 60, said: "There are lots of people in Southampton who have expert knowledge, and in the past there haven't been enough people supervising every room."

But city culture boss Councillor Satvir Kaur defended the decision, saying: "There aren't going to be any redundancies, it's a restructure of staff. And one of the reasons to include more volunteers is to ensure we have more coverage for the site."

A spokesperson from Southampton City Council added: "We are currently in the process of appointing a volunteer coordinator and once in place, we will be issuing more information in due course as part of our volunteer recruitment campaign.

"The front of house team currently that work across our three venues will now work across two, with volunteers taking on some of the roles at Tudor House.

"The most accurate way of describing how we are achieving savings is that we have removed the 2.6 full time equivalent posts, which are currently vacant, from the arts and heritage front of house team."

The 15th-century Tudor House was renovated with an £8million grant in 2011.