Talks held over jobs freeze vote

The proposals are expected to save the authority about £3m

Union leaders have agreed to hold talks with Somerset County Council bosses after the authority voted to continue a recruitment freeze to help cut costs.

The Conservative-led council also wants to look at a number of other measures aimed at protecting existing jobs.

These include cutting redundancy payments, reducing the salaries of the most highly paid officers and suspending incremental progression.

Richard Antcliffe from Unison said the ideas all need to be treated with care.

"It's very important that any changes in the way staff are paid or the conditions they work under are common to authorities across the region," Mr Antcliffe said.

We have to take radical, serious, substantial action to avoid compulsory redundancies Ken Maddock Somerset County Council

"If ours are worse than other authorities, Somerset will become a backwater."

One of the more controversial proposals is the temporary suspension of incremental progression for some staff.

"People who are just starting in their careers and have a long way to go, and people whose work demands they change posts a lot, will be hit the hardest," he said.

"This is where all the equalities legislation comes in to play so if the county council were to move this particular suggestion forward it would expose itself to treating people unequally."

The Tories said savings from this bundle of proposals would amount to some £3m but the council has a debt of about £360m.

Council leader Ken Maddock said: "We have to take radical, serious, substantial action to avoid compulsory redundancies.

"We will need to take other measures as well so it's not going to solve the problem overnight but we're asking everybody to share the pain and that includes councillors."