THE final phase of Focus on the Future will see the loss of more borough jobs, with 60 council posts having been lost in all during the three-year review.

But the council is confident it can avoid more redundancies as it initiates an ambitious redeployment process by moving workers into vacant posts.

Staff from across the board will lose jobs but will be invited to re-apply for new ones.

Workers who do not agree to redeployment will be offered counselling, redundancy support and job retraining.

Those who do will be offered a pay protection scheme, ensuring their salary remains the same for a period of time should the new job pay less.

Council leader Albert Wharrad said: "The hardest decisions we had to make related to job losses.

"I'm a life long trade unionist so I understand it has been painful.

"But we are offering vacant positions to those losing their post."

Mr Wharrad added: "The council has an excellent track record of redeploying staff and we hope to keep the number of redundancies to a minimum."

But Conservative leader Councillor Carole Gandy said: "It's ironic some of the posts at risk are posts created in the last couple of years."