KENT County Council has defended moves to reduce the size of its workforce by eight per cent over the next three years.

Details of the plans to slim down the number of employees emerged in a leaked memo by council leader Paul Carter, which also revealed that KCC is aiming to cut its staffing budget by six per cent.

Cllr Carter said there was no question of compulsory redundancies among staff and that he would not countenance any job cuts that adversely affected frontline services. The plan was a response to the prospect of decreasing Government grants for services.

An eight per cent cut is estimated to be between 800 and 1,000 jobs.

“I am optimistic that if we are clever and smart we can achieve this without affecting frontline services. We know that we are in for difficult times with smaller government settlements in the next few years and we have a duty to reduce the burden on the taxpayer as much as possible. This is absolutely not about mass redundancies,” he stressed.

He confirmed he had instructed senior managers to examine whether, when staff left, their work could be done in a different way without replacing them.

“To me, that seems perfectly sensible. Where it can be done, we will. But we want to improve our services it is quite possible that may mean more staff in some areas [but] the message to managers across KCC is that as staff leave, they must look at what opportunities there are to re-engineer our business units,” he said.

Opposition Labour leader Cllr Mike Eddy questioned the need for staff cuts and said KCC should have consulted over its plans.

“I would not quibble with doing things better or more efficiently but the business of the county council is to provide personal services for a whole variety of people that often involve employees in face-to-face situations with residents,” he said.

He rejected Conservative complaints that KCC had been shortchanged by the Government.