Dorset County Council is bracing itself for its share of ‘pain’ after councillors were warned the extent of funding cuts could exceed £40million.

The Dorset Echo revealed last week that hundreds of jobs could be lost and a number of council services such as libraries and youth clubs were facing cutbacks as the council sought to save a minimum of £30million.

At a meeting yesterday of the council’s cabinet chief financial officer Paul Kent told members that the full extent of Government funding cuts over the coming years would not be known until a spending review in October.

However, he warned initial estimates of between £27million and £40million ‘might be slightly underestimated’.

This forecast of the budget gap between 2011/12 and 2013/14 is around 10-15 per cent of the council’s budget.

Mr Kent said in the current financial year the council had experienced a reduction in grants of around £6.9million and while a number of savings had already been identified, the authority still needed to find £3.6million in savings this year to account for that loss in funding.

He said all directors at the council had been given funding targets and identifying areas in their departments where savings could be achieved.

The council has already produced a report called the Meeting Future Challenges review, which identifies areas for potential savings.

These include suggestions such as suspending salary increments across the organisation, reducing overtime expenditure, a review of the library service and reducing the length of time street lights are lit overnight.

Cabinet member for corporate resources Councillor Spencer Flower said: “The key thing is whatever we put on the list to make reductions will have an element of pain in it.

“We are going to have to step up to the plate and take our part of the pain.”

Other savings ‘opportunities’ put forward in the review include implementing the Government’s two-year pay freeze on public sector pay included in the recent emergency budget and reducing expenditure on external contractors and consultants.

Coun Flower said: “I think this is a good template to work on until we know exactly what the spending review is going to say.”

Dorset County Council employs around 16,000 full and part-time staff people including school workers.

Unions are preparing for intense negotiations in order to head off massive redundancies. No figures on job cuts have been mentioned but unions believe it will be at least ‘hundreds’.

Outside the meeting, David Harris, Lib-Dem county councillor for Westham, predicted ‘painful’ job cuts and called for the council to protect frontline services.

He said: “It could well be over £40million. And we don’t know what the government is going to knock back.

“Critically we need to protect those frontline services and identify the unnecessary work.

“When an organisation gets fairly large, as Dorset County Council is, there will always be elements of work that have been there forever and which may no longer be relevant or necessary today.”

Mr Harris said when job cuts are unavoidable the council needs to look at the staff who have the least impact on the community.

He added: “It’s always going to be painful because any cutbacks in a county council will generally be painful. That can’t be avoided. We have to try and minimise that pain to protect those who depend upon county council services.”