TWO hundred Blackburn with Darwen council workers have been made compulsorily redundant since 2010 because of spending cuts, it was revealed last night.

More face the same fate in the next year. The figures were revealed by borough finance boss Andy Kay as he prepares budgets for the coming months.

He expects to spend £5 million from reserves to meet the bill for staff payoffs.

He has a target of 500 fewer town hall posts by March 2015, set in January last year. So far almost 300 posts have been axed as Coun Kay tries to save £30 million over two years.

In 2010 the council had 3,740 non-teaching staff. In January last year, that figure had fallen to 2,800.

Now the total has fallen to 2,600.

In the last 12 months 100 posts were transferred with funding to the town hall from the NHS and Capita.

This still leaves another 200 plus posts facing the axe.

In July last year 60 staff had been made compulsorily redundant in the new wave of job cuts, 48 people had taken early or voluntary redundancy and a small number had retired naturally or taken other jobs.

Fixed-term contracts had been axed and 39 workers had been redeployed to vacant posts. Now Mr Kay is wrestling with the final wave of job losses to meet the 500 target by March. Asked by Tory group leader Mike Lee at this month’s meeting of the council executive board about unspent cash reserves of more than £7 million, coun Kay said: “We need up to £6 million to pay for redundancies. We are working on that programme now.”

Coun Lee is now to question him on the progress of the latest redundancy programme.

Coun Kay said last night: “As a result of the government’s cuts to our funding it has been an extremely difficult few years. The council has reduced its staff since 2010 by almost 1,100 with 200 of these being compulsory redundancies.

“The tough times are continuing.

“Unfortunately, there will be more redundancies because of the size of the cuts we will need to make.”

Coun Lee said: “I shall be questioning Coun Kay on the exact details of the job loss and savings programme”