TWELVE thousand council staff will be offered voluntary redundancy as Hampshire County Council bids to plug a £90million budget black hole.

The entire workforce at Hampshire County Council is to be offered an ‘enhanced package’ based on factors such as age and length of service, as the county bids to cut hundreds of jobs by 2015.

Letters will be sent to staff in the coming weeks and the scheme will close at the end of March next year.

It comes as plans to cut a further £100m from the county council budget by 2018 were put into motion last week.

About 1,000 jobs are set to go as part of these budget cuts, which are predicted to be so hard-hitting that county council bosses have given the go-ahead to start planning two years before they come into force.

Speaking to his Cabinet, which agreed to press ahead with the fresh round of cuts, Hampshire County Council leader Councillor Roy Perry said the council would strive to avoid forcing people out of their jobs.

He said: “To date, we have achieved job losses with almost no compulsory redundancies and that will continue to be our ambition.

“Through the natural churn you get in a large organisation, people leave or go off to jobs elsewhere and many go into the private sector.

“I am told in the course of the year, it’s quite common to have 700 or more people leave, and then it’s not unusual for 200 to 250 people to retire. That’s 1,000 in a year.

“I am not going to say no positions will be replaced. Clearly some are essential work.

“But we will do our level best to see that is how we manage the reduction in the job force — not by compul-sory redundancies.”

As previously reported, the future of many frontline services, including those safeguarding some of society’s most vulnerable children and adults, will also be under threat in the “colossal” round of cuts for 2017-18.

Money to repair Hamp-shire’s roads, waste disposal and even the county’s trading standards service could be severely streamlined as those holding the purse strings at Hampshire County Council attempt to balance the books.

But Cllr Perry said Hampshire had to face up to the fact that Government grants to councils would continue to fall, and action was needed to cut costs.

He said: “It’s no good putting decisions off. The sooner one addresses the situation, the easier it is to handle and deal with it.

“That has been our strategy up to now and that will continue to be our strategy.”

Further details of the cuts will be agreed next July.

The news comes as the county council’s own chief executive, Andrew Smith, has predicted that the dire financial situation will not improve for “many, many years to come,” and says that there is no longer any “easy” way to make savings.