Hertfordshire County Council is looking to make £5m in workforce savings, in order to balance its budget for 2026/27.

Overall, the authority is set to spend £1.2bn next year on services that include children's services, adult care, public health, trading standards, highways and libraries, as well as the Hertfordshire Fire and Rescue Service.

But in order to balance the budget in 2026/27, the county council has drawn up plans to make savings of £55m.

And that – according to the council's budget proposals, which were published last week – includes £5m workforce savings.

Leader of the county council, Cllr Steve Jarvi,s says officials will look at ways to make council services and processes more efficient – with redundancies only as "a last resort".

He said: "As a financially responsible council committed to delivering for our residents, we will continue to innovate and work as efficiently as possible to reduce costs and provide the best value for money.

"The workforce savings set out in the draft budget are just a small part of the wider savings we need to make to balance our budget for the next financial year.

"We have already introduced a range of measures to manage our workforce costs, including deleting budgeted vacancies, carefully managing recruitment to ensure only essential posts are filled, promoting additional leave purchase schemes, and reducing spend on agency staff.

"Alongside these, teams across the council will be looking at ways of making their services and the processes they use more efficient, including exploring opportunities to drive innovations through technology where appropriate.

"Our staff are our biggest asset and any proposals to make savings through redundancy will always remain a last resort."

Just two years ago, the council launched a major review of staffing, buildings and technology, in a bid to cut annual costs by £16m.

And although officials say they are now looking for further efficiencies, they say this time there are unlikely to be significant job losses.

The use of technology – including artificial intelligence (AI) – will be considered, the Local Democracy Reporting Service understands, in a bid to drive innovation and increase efficiency.

This is likely to be used in 'back office' areas, where officials say it could be used to make a real difference to frontline services.

Hertfordshire County Council currently employs around 8000 staff.

The executive member for resources and performance, Cllr Chris Lucas, says the review will not be about making staff redundant, but rather investing in the staff the council has.