LANCASHIRE County Council is scrapping 157 senior posts on salaries from £40,000 to £170,000 as it seeks to save £300 million by 2017.

The move is part of Labour leaders’ bid to spread an estimated 2,500 redundancies over three years across all levels of its current 30,000 staff.

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The announcement is the latest stage of an overhaul of how the authority delivers its services in the face of cuts in Whitehall grants.

The losses, which will save £11.4 million a year, have angered local government union Unison and Tory group leader Geoff Driver.

The redundancies at the council, which provides many services to 12 boroughs including Hyndburn, Ribble Valley, Burnley, Pendle, Rossendale and Chorley will be concentrated at County Hall Preston.

The jobs affected are executives with salaries ranging from £39,351 to £170,000.

County leader Jennifer Mein said: “We've taken the decision to create a new staffing structure that reflects a big reduction in the size of the organisation, focusing resources around our priorities of tackling health inequalities, delivering economic growth and protecting the vulnerable.

"We are protecting frontline services as much as possible, so we're proposing a disproportionately large saving amongst these more senior roles than will apply to posts on lower pay grades, which will take place next year and affect around 14,000 employees.

“We remain fully committed to doing everything possible to avoid compulsory redundancies."

The current 753 senior posts will be reduced to 596.

Elaine Cotterell, Unison Lancashire branch secretary, said: “We fear that the scale of cuts will make it very hard to avoid compulsory redundancies. We are concerned the remaining staff will face impossible workloads and services will be severely affected.”

Coun Driver said: “We think it seriously undervalues professionals in local government.”