A £19.3million funding gap and rising teacher’s pensions costs could see large-scale redundancies, a cabinet member has warned.

To cover the funding gap, the cabinet has asked for education and social services to stick to the previous year’s budget, while all other departments have been asked to make an eight per cent reduction.

At the same time, teachers’ pension contributions are expected to significantly increase, at a cost of £0.8million for 2019-20.

During a meeting earlier this week, Councillor Bob Kilmister, cabinet member for finance warned that this could lead to redundancies for teachers.

He said: “We believe that this situation will lead to an awful lot of redundancies and is a very big risk because we are not going to be able to fund that.

“It would have to be funded on the flat line of their budgets, school are going to have to find it.

“The flatlining of the budgets sounds good, but in reality, it means that they’ve substantially less money to play with because it doesn’t take into account inflation.”

In the draft budget, the council said that the employer’s contribution rate for teachers’ pensions will increase from 16.48per to 23.6per cent.

Cllr Kilmister said: “In terms of the teachers’ pay, the pensions superannuation costs for employers is due to rise by 60 per cent in September next year and at the moment that is completely and utterly unfunded.

“That problem faces every council in Wales.”

The budget is expected to change considerably over the next few months, with the final settlement from the Welsh Government is expected to arrive on December 19.

The cabinet will then make a recommendation to council on February 11, with the council making its final decision on February 21.