The coalition government is looking to the public sector as one of the ways to blitz spending and reduce the huge deficit caused by the bail-out of the banks. The Scottish government, which currently gets all its funding from Westminster, has to decide how much it can afford to give councils. With this in mind, BBC Scotland approached all 32 councils in Scotland to ask about anticipated job losses, and ten Scottish local authorities replied they expect to cut 10,000 jobs between them over the next few years. The councils said they hoped the savings would happen through natural turnover, retirement and voluntary redundancy.
