Rutland County Council is planning to make £4.6m of savings by April 2028 and has been restructuring departments which will see up to seven jobs disappear. 

This follows similar cuts to reduce spending, such as the announcement earlier in the week that the council will no longer provide school sports subsidies.

The authority, which employed 463 staff at the end of June, has made one redundancy so far. Some staff may be also deployed to other roles.  

The council's annual budget is just under £50 million. 

Like most local authorities, Rutland County Council has been hit by budget pressures due to inflation, more demand for services and cost of living pressures on residents. 

At the full council meeting in September, former leader of the council Oliver Hemsley (Ind – Langham), who stood down over criticism of then prime minister Boris Johnson, accused the authority – which is now run by a minority Liberal Democrat administration – of a failure to communicate. He said he found out about some job cuts from staff members.  

Current council leader Gale Waller (Lib Dem – Normanton) said in response: "The need to embark on transformation was driven by the desire to improve service and to make sign budget savings. This was clear from the outset it would lead to some reorganisation and redundancies of posts.  

"The transformation programme is a challenging programme with the significant budget savings required and – detailed exploration of all potential options have been ongoing throughout the last year, 18 months.  

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"This includes viable delivery structures which cannot be confirmed in detail until all HR processes have been completed." 

The authority secures a number of services from other neighbouring councils to be more cost efficient. It has agreements with Leicester County Council as well as Leicester City Council, Peterborough County Council and Melton Borough Council. 

Services it contracts out to these neighbours includes coroner services, environmental health, food safety and public health.