SNOWDONIA National Park chiefs have made “gruelling decisions” to find savings of over £750,000 and have announced that job losses and toilet closures are “unavoidable”.

At a meeting at Plas Tan y Bwlch last week, members of Snowdonia National Park Authority resolved how to proceed to save almost £800,000 following the Welsh Government’s recent decision to reduce the authority’s budget.

Toilets in Dyffryn Arduwy are set to close as the park is forced to hack its budget and redundancies, to the “detriment” of Snowdonia National Park, will be enforced.

The park, which currently employs 135 staff, will have a core budget in 2020 of £4,484,669 – £50k less that its core budget in 2001.

The cut is equivalent to a five per cent cut in each of the next two years (2018-2020) totalling savings of £788,674.

Considering salary inflation and general inflation over the last 20 years, the authority today has significantly less resources to fulfil the purposes given to the national park when it was established in 1951.

Presenting his report to members, Emyr Williams, chief executive of the park authority said: “It’s a difficult and extremely worrying time for us as staff and for authority members.

“We have already lost 40 valuable jobs in the past 10 years, which is a huge loss to this rural area.

“Today we have had to consider more job losses, although we need to accomplish more now than at any other time in our history.”

At the meeting, members agreed to increase income from car parks and the authority’s education centre, Plas Tan y Bwlch.

It was also agreed that efficiency savings of £170,018 could be made through a variety of ways, including providing more information electronically rather than on paper, closing toilets at Morfa Dyffryn and reducing the workload of internal audit.

The board also hopes to save £300,000 by reducing grants for tree work, reducing spend on public rights of way and reducing spend on contractors.

Unfortunately, these steps will unavoidably impact jobs within the authority.

Chair of the Authority, Owain Wyn, added: “It has been a gruelling task for members to decide how we deliver our services, prioritise those services that are essential in delivering our purposes and trying to protect as many jobs as possible at the same time.

“Unfortunately, given these circumstances, we had no option other than to consider redundancies, even though this will have a detrimental effect on our work.”

During the meeting, recommendations regarding redundancies were made and as a result, further consultation will take place with the staff who will be faced with losing their jobs.