A new era for Highland Council will begin next week with the inaugural meeting of a committee to reshape the streamlined authority.
Council chiefs felt compelled to instigate a “redesign” in the wake of successive and swingeing annual budget cuts due to reduced government funding.
Highland had to identify £50million of savings for 2016-17 alone, equivalent to about 10% of its overall budget, resulting in massive service cuts and hundreds of voluntary redundancies.
The new group will meet next Monday when office bearers will be appointed and its terms of reference mapped out.
The council expects to have to make further multimillion-pound savings over the next two years due to the continuing recession.
While 600 staff took up an invitation, last December, from chief executive Steve Barron for people to apply for voluntary redundancy to help balance the books, 340 were accepted.
The cost of that was covered by emergency reserves. The final amount has not been confirmed.
Finance director Derek Yule is drafting a report to update councillors on the cost of the exercise and the implications for each department.
