All non-teaching staff at Shropshire Council have been offered the chance to take voluntary redundancy in a bid to plug a funding gap of more than £59m.

The move is one of the ways the council is looking to address a budget shortfall of around £59.3m over the next five years.

Shropshire hopes to save £1m before 31 March 2018 and then £9m over the next two years through its voluntary redundancy process.

Council chief executive, Clive Wright, said: ‘Many of our back office processes will become automated and our frontline services will be able to operate mostly out of centralised buildings.

'This will make us more efficient and most jobs will change.

'Overall, there will unfortunately be some job losses.

‘As we've said, allowing volunteers for redundancy has been our preference rather than drawn out compulsory redundancies.'