MORE than 450 new redundancies have now been announced at Essex County Council.

The council’s cabinet met to agree the budget for 2011/12 and its proposals will now go to full council for a final decision later this month.

As the council is dominated by the Conservative Party, its proposals will almost certainly be approved.

In recent months the council has already made 123 redundancies, 69 of which were voluntary.

Next year hundreds more will face the axe as the council cuts and privatises services and Unison, a union representing local government workers, said by 2014 hardly anyone will be employed by the council.

Despite the cuts, the council cabinet has invited taxpayers to “Go Compare” with other councils as it is confident it has prepared better and saved more services than other authorities.

Unison branch secretary Babs Whitfield also agreed Essex was better off than most because the council was “more prepared than most”.

David Finch, cabinet member for finance, said the funding for redundancies would have to come from its reserves.

He said: “I think we have done an incredible job of managing the budget process. We are rationing the service to meet the public need with steps we had to take.”

Leader Peter Martin agreed the council “needs to, where it can, make redundancies as much as possible to fund services.”

Essex County Council is hoping to make £98million in savings in 2011/12 as well as using £40million in reserves to cover increased costs and Government grant cuts.