MORE than 150 jobs could go at a local council as it looks to make budget cuts.

The Isle of Wight Council announced today it had launched a consultation over a potential 152 job losses in the coming year.

A statement on its website said: "Against the backdrop of an ever decreasing financial base upon which to deliver services, due to a reduction in government funding and increased costs, the council needs to reduce its net spend by some £13.5 million in the next financial year.

"It therefore needs to look radically at different ways of delivering services and allocating its resources to essential services."

The council said support would be offered to those affected and compulsory redundancies would be kept to a minimum, with options including job sharing, reduced hours, flexible retirement, voluntary retirement and voluntary redundancy.

The statement added: "Over the past year the council has been considering ways to reduce costs within the organisation in order to meet the level of savings required.

"This has included reviewing the costs of all council services, improving business processes and utilising technology more effectively, developing preventative strategies to reduce the demand for high cost crisis care among our older and more vulnerable residents and looking at ways of increasing the amount of income the council generates.

"Due to the extent of savings required, not just over the coming year but in following years too, it has become clear that savings in these areas alone will not be enough to meet the budget gap.”

Cllr Ian Stephens, leader of the Isle of Wight Council, said: "As we prepare next year’s budget we are continuing to explore a range of options in order to keep the number of redundancies to a minimum, however due to the scale of savings we need to find unfortunately some job losses will be inevitable. We really value the hard work and commitment of our work force and the council will be doing all it can to provide help and support to staff during this difficult time."

The consultation period, which will last 45 working days, was launched yesterday.

Budget plans are due before the council executive in January, with final recommendations and budget proposals put forward for full council approval in February.