The Policy and Resources Committee agreed on Thursday, August 20, that £1 million could be saved ‘without impacting’ the number of jobs, policy, or communities.

These savings, from different services, include using fuel efficient vehicles to reduce the spending.

Savings options with impact on policy will be considered further and put to public consultation from October.

Bridging the funding gap will mean that council services will have to deliver on average 6.17 per cent savings during 2016/17 and 2017/18.

Councillors agreed to invite expressions of interest in voluntary redundancy.

A report to the committee highlighted not all requests for voluntary redundancy can be guaranteed as the council must ensure that services can continue to operate without particular posts.

Councillor Dick Walsh, leader of Argyll and Bute Council, said: “The reduction expected in local government funding from next year means that we have to make significant savings in order to balance our budget.

“A lot of hard work is being done to identify different options for making these savings, so that we can identify, with input from public consultation, how the council can best serve our communities with reduced resources.

“Just as we will do all we can to keep to a minimum impact on our communities, we will do all possible to protect jobs for our hardworking workforce.

“Offering voluntary redundancy is about creating opportunities to match employees at risk of redundancy with posts vacated by volunteers.

“By identifying over £1million of savings that will not impact on our communities, we have taken another significant step forward in meeting our budget challenge.” At the same meeting, the committee also agreed an indicative savings level of four to six per cent for social work services.

This will allow the development of proposals which will be the subject of discussions with the Argyll and Bute Health and Social Care Partnership in due course.

The Health and Social Care Partnership brings council social care services and health services together as one organisation. Social work services will be managed from April 2016 as part of the partnership’s integrated joint board.