MORE than 70 jobs could be axed at Weymouth JobCentre.

Seventy-six benefits processors based at the JobCentre Plus in Westwey Road face relocation or redundancy in a cull of 100,000 government posts across the UK.

The staff process thousands of claims including income support, Jobseekers' allowance and incapacity benefit.

Spokesman for the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union Alex Flynn said: "People are very angry and worried about keeping their jobs - they feel that this is just a cost-cutting exercise."

Department for Work and Pensions spokeswoman Mary Dowling said: "Weymouth JobCentre Plus office will cease to be a benefit processing site at a point in the future but a final date has not yet been decided. The service to our customers will not be affected.

"Customers will continue to receive the high level of customer service at our Weymouth office including one-to-one interviews, along with job searches on the jobpoint computers.

"We will also be delivering many of our services through telephone and Internet facilities to complement our face-to-face service. We are confident that our customers will experience a faster, more efficient service as a result of the changes, in a more modern, welcoming environment.

"The number of staff affected by the changes is not finalised but we will try to maintain employment for as many staff as possible.

"Compulsory redundancy, however, will be a last resort and will only take place after all other options have been considered."

South Dorset MP Jim Knight is in negotiations to find people employment elsewhere in the Department of Work and Pensions and has been looking at the possibility of increasing the number of personal advisers under the New Deal in Dorset.

He added: "Clearly, we have got to ensure that there will be alternatives for those people who do not or cannot be relocated."

He urged people not to get depressed about unemployment in Weymouth following the New Look job losses.

He said: "South Dorset has enjoyed a fall of 72 per cent in the number of people claiming benefits from September 1997 to September 2004. That is the second largest fall in any constituency in the country."

The PCS union has organised a nation-wide strike next Friday to protest about 40,000 job losses in DWP as part of sweeping cuts to the civil service and Weymouth JobCentre Plus union members will be picketing their office that day.