Councils are warning about further job cuts as budgets are agreed this week across the country.

Salford City Council, whose ‘austerity’ budget includes £25m of cuts, expects to see 300 council posts disappear through voluntary redundancy and early retirement.

City mayor, Ian Stewart, said: ‘The face of local government in Salford is being changed forever because of this Government’s austerity policies. Public services are going to be dramatically different in the future, because of the scale and severity of these cuts.’

Cambridgeshire County Council has also agreed its ‘tough’ budget to meet £38m savings over the next year, in addition to the £128m already saved over the past there years. It expects to make around 70 redundancies as a result of services being re-structured.

Leader of Cambridgeshire County Council, Martin Curtis, said: ‘We have already saved tens of millions of pounds by making savings where people would expect whilst having very limited reserves. But we are also being innovative with such projects as sharing services with other councils through LGSS as well as being a UK leader in better use of public sector buildings with our partners.

‘However, the scale of savings we now need to make means we have had to make tough decisions and inevitably some regrettable cuts to frontline services. But these cuts are necessary so that we can continue to make sure we protect the most vulnerable while supporting the local economy and jobs.’

Yesterday, Wolverhampton City Council said it needed to cut 2,000 jobs, twice as many as first expected.