COUNTY council staff in Ceredigion have accepted that redundancies will have to be made, a meeting has heard.

Talks between Bronwen Morgan, the council’s chief executive, and members of staff drawing up a business plan for the technical services department have been held as staff try to find alternative ways to make savings than those proposed by consultants PriceWaterhousecoopers.

Ms Morgan told the council’s Cabinet that those talks had led to an agreement that staff redundancies were inevitable, something that had also been accepted by a Unison union official.

While the council has said it hopes to be able to make savings without compulsory redundancies, it has been warned that savings of over £2.5m have to be made.

A report by Ms Morgan said: “There is a commitment and an acknowledgement that there is an opportunity for the in-house teams to be more flexible in work practices and that flexibility and the staff’s transferable skills can in itself create efficiencies for the council.

“Currently the identified efficiencies in the emerging plan is not of the same value and falls short of the savings as required under the Medium Term Finance Plan.

“There is a staff consensus that in order to create further efficiencies, there will be a need to streamline and implement a different structure."

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