ONE of Hampshire’s senior politicians has refused to rule out a new round of local authority staff cuts – just weeks after axing dozens of council jobs.

Controversial plans were unveiled earlier this year to slash up to 60 posts at Test Valley council as part of moves to plug a £1.9 million funding shortfall.

Now council leader Ian Carr said he could not rule out yet more redundancies after warning of tough financial times ahead.

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He said an upcoming report would show that “much more needs to be done to maintain a stable and balanced budget in future years”.

And asked whether the comments meant further job losses, he told The Daily Echo: “We cannot rule anything out. We have just restructured and made extra redundancies – I hope we can get away with no more than that.

“We will look at everything.”

The authority has already launched a savage economy drive after a poor return on investments left the authority with a £1.876m hole in its annual budget.

At the time, Cabinet members were told that between 20 and 30 vacant staff posts could be scrapped and a further 20 to 30 workers were likely to be made redundant.

It also meant ploughing ahead with an inflation-busting council tax increase of 4.5 per cent.

Cllr Carr said despite the cost-cutting measures, there could still be funding gaps of up to £1m in each of the next two to three financial years.

“That is what we have to contend with and we need to work hard to try and close that gap,” he added.

“I hope it won’t mean more redundancies – we are down to levels now where we are just coping.

“It is not a way we want to go. We need to find efficiencies – I don’t know yet how we will find them, but we will work hard to do so.

“Every year we have been looking for savings and we have managed to find them, but as time goes on it gets more and more difficult.”