UP to 90 jobs look to be under threat in the latest round of budget savings at Argyll and Bute Council.

A list of potential policy savings, identified by local authority officials, is due to be considered at a full council meeting today.

School janitors, debt counsellors and those who work in the authority's road safety unit are among the council workers whose jobs have been identified in the list of potential savings to be made over the next three years.

Other savings options include closing 36 of the council's 57 public toilets, increasing car parking charges and introducing charges where parking is currently free.

But councillors have been warned that even if they press ahead with all the proposed savings and increased charges, those on their own still won't be enough to bridge the budget gap facing the authority.

A final decision on where the axe will fall, both in terms of jobs and council services, won't be made until February.

But a public consultation on the proposals is due to start in a few weeks – kicking off months of uncertainty for the council workers whose jobs might be at risk.

Ahead of today's meeting in Lochgilphead, council leader and Helensburgh councillor Aileen Morton told the Advertiser: “All councils are continuing to operate in a world of ongoing funding cuts which makes it very difficult to continue to deliver services.

“Based on responses to previous consultations where local people said we should look to raise money rather than just cut services many of the options for consideration this year do include that – such as the possibility of creating a funeral service, or looking at increasing fees for some planning services.”

The savings options – totalling £1.8m in 2018-19, rising to £5.765m by 2020-21 – include the potential loss of 13.5 posts through a “review of current janitorial staffing deployment across all schools” while three more jobs could also be at risk in the council's debt counselling and welfare rights service – one of whose current staff starred in the first episode of a BBC TV series last week on life behind the scenes at the authority.

A separate report to today's council meeting warns that the council faces a funding gap of up to £34 million over the next three years – with up to £8.5m of that falling in 2018-19.

Cllr Morton continued: “We won’t know just how much money we have to save until the end of this year when the Scottish Government announce our funding settlement but we need to prepare to make substantial savings because based on experience that is what will be required of us.”

Councillors are also expected to approve a public consultation exercise on the proposed savings, to run from November 13 to January 2.

Further 'management/operational savings', which won't result in any redundancies, have already been identified by council officials.

These total £620,000 in 2018-19, rising to £1.245m by 2020-21 – though a report by Kirsty Flanagan, the authority's head of strategic finance, warns that “it cannot be assumed that all management/operational savings will not have a service impact”.

Helensburgh councillor Gary Mulvaney, the authority's depute leader and policy lead for strategic finance, added: “The situation the council faces is very, very similar to previous years -we have a potential cut in government funding and increasing cost and demand pressures, but still have an obligation to set a balanced budget.

“When the public consultation starts in November we're looking for people to feed back what is important to them, to enable us to make an informed judgement on how to take savings proposals forward.

“Nobody would choose to be here, having to make cuts in spending and reductions in serices, but these are particularly challenging times for local government.”