Government spending cuts will result in the loss of around 100,000 public sector jobs by next spring, with redundancy letters expected to be sent out before the new year, it has been claimed.

According to a report in the Guardian, local councils, police forces and other services are expected to bear the brunt of reductions to funding, with authorities obliged to shed posts by the current deadline of March 31st 2011.

“Council finance committee meetings are being held … to finalise the issuing of formal notices of redundancies,” said GMB general secretary Paul Kenny. “There are troubled times ahead and a lot of families face a miserable Christmas.”

Among those areas expected to be worst hit are Lancashire and Birmingham, each of which look set to sack 5,000 publicly-paid staff, while Leeds City Council and Norfolk County Council will both lose 3,000.

Last week, the Centre for Economics and Business Research claimed that as many as two million job vacancies will appear in the UK’s public sector by 2015-16.

Posted by Cameron Thomson