A council facing multimillion-pound budget cuts is to ask employees if they want to take voluntary redundancy.
Argyll and Bute Council has savings targets of between £21.7-£26million over five years.
It is preparing to slash its budget by around £9million in both 2016/17 and 2017/18.
The authority is currently undergoing a “service choices” process, where a huge list of services will have their budgets cut by 20%, while many more will lose 6% of their funding.
Jobs will be axed, services to the elderly cut and spending on roads and schools squeezed.
Decisions on savings options to go out to public consultation will be made at a council meeting in October, with a consultation running until December.
A report on the consultation findings will go to the council’s policy and resources committee in January, with the budget set at a meeting in February 2016.
As the committee unanimously agreed yesterday to invite all employees to express any interest for voluntary redundancy, Council Leader Councillor Dick Walsh said: “This item is about planning our future. This is a consequence of the service choices.”
The council management will contact the staff within the next few weeks.
Employees will be made aware that an expression of interest does not mean that voluntary redundancy will be guaranteed.
The committee also noted that the council will need to consider making an allowance for the cost of severance, which could be significant.
In his report Douglas Hendry, director of customer services, wrote: “Inevitably jobs will be affected and given the council’s redundancy policy gives a commitment to avoid compulsory redundancies as far as possible, it is recommended that a letter is sent to council employees asking them to express an interest in voluntary redundancy.
“The council undertook a similar exercise in 2010 and it elicited more than 900 responses, which resulted in a considerable workload for the modernisation team, which was specially set up within HR to deal specifically with the service review process.
“The council is facing a substantial gap in its budget over the next five years which will inevitably have an impact on job numbers, with the current estimate that most of the savings will have to be delivered within the next two years.
“The council has a redundancy policy which aims to mitigate the number of compulsory redundancies through managing redeployment and voluntary redundancies.”