A UNION today accused a council of pushing staff to their limits after it emerged some vacancies are left unfilled for three months to save £100,000 a year.

Neville Davies, UNISON's regional officer for Burnley Council, said it had trimmed 200 jobs across the board in the past two years reducing staffing levels 'down to the bone'.

He claimed the council, which employs 700 people, was at risk of an expensive damages claim for stress that would "obliterate" any money saved with the policy of not advertising jobs until the vacancy had been empty for three months.

The Local Government Association today said it had not heard of such a case and neighbouring Pendle Council said although it took about 12 weeks to fill a vacancy, it did not have the same policy as Burnley.

Councillor Peter Kenyon, executive member for best value and resources, said that they had needed to adopt the policy to save money as a necessity but said they were concerned about the stress of staff as result of an increased workload.

But he defended the scheme as a contribution to budgetary savings as it allowed money to spent elsewhere on services, he said.

The policy disclosure came as councillors said they felt that the system had become too bureaucratic making it difficult to assess how much the scheme saved.

The council heard that the personnel manager would now consult with the relevant director to assess whether a vacancies could be left unfilled for 12 weeks.

Mr Davies said: "As far as we are concerned the staffing has been cut to the bone and we already see more absences with stress so this policy doesn't help.

"Over the past two years 200 jobs have gone all over the place at the council. It's saving money on the one hand but this could result in a greater cost if they have a stress case against them. "We have councillors shouting about poor services on the one hand as members of the public complain, but maybe this is why."

Coun Kenyon said: "There's a great deal of stress on staff from a variety of sources which certainly we are worried about.

"It's something we have to do to save money and we deal with this problem on a daily basis. It's a result of conditions imposed on us which means we have to do this.

"The three month freeze isn't a change of policy. There's an expectation that there will be a three month gap before that post is filled."

Personnel assistant with Pendle Council Kim Nuttall said: "We don't do that. Every vacant post has to go to the vacancy monitoring panel and that is where they discuss if it needs to be filled, if it is graded correctly and if there are any savings to be made and then if it is seen as a post which needs filling it is immediately advertised.

"It does take about three months to fill a vacancy."

Assistant director for the Local Government Association, Mike Walker said: "This is the first I have heard of this at this time. "