A CASH-STRAPPED council battling to reduce compulsory redundancies has cut spending by £500,000.

Twenty four workers at Hyndburn Council, including the director of community services Mr Edgar Bignell, put in for voluntary redundancy or early retirement.

Twelve people have had their requests granted with their responsibilities being absorbed by other workers, and the council is investigating the other 12 applications to see if their positions would need to be refilled.

The council had a target saving of £850,000 and has achieved £500,000 from voluntary job cuts and management restructuring.

Chief executive Mike Chambers said the savings meant the number of compulsory redundancies would be smaller than first anticipated. But he refused to speculate on figures and said the matter would be discussed in more detail at a private meeting on Monday.

Now the council is looking at ways of saving money which is not tied up in staff contracts, in areas including computers, maintenance, buildings and property.

Mr Chambers said: "There has been a steady trickle of employees over the last 12 months putting in for early retirement or voluntary redundancy since we started gently encouraging people.

"The next process is to take stock of where employees are going from and making sure that their services are covered by other people."

As part of the cost cutting, the development services and community services departments will merge from October to form an environmental and regeneration services section.

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