Almost 300 people said they were interested in taking voluntary redundancy as part of a £40million cost cutting scheme at Wolverhampton City Council.

Officials say more than 100 were allowed to leave.

They said the cut in posts will save £2.75m a year.

New figures released by the authority today show that 293 people expressed an interest in the voluntary redundancy scheme which closed at the end of April.

Of those, 111 people were accepted and were released from the council and their posts deleted.

Another 77 people either withdrew their initial interest or resigned/ retired while the scheme was under way and 15 people had their application for voluntary redundancy rejected due to a strain on the pension fund.

Another 60 people had their applications rejected because management took the decision the posts were needed while nine applications were rejected for other reasons.

In 21 cases redundancies were “bumped”, meaning that someone has applied for redundancy but there was someone else available with the skills to do the job, they stepped into the role and it was their post that was deleted instead.

There was a one-off cost this year of £2m because of redundancy pay.

The voluntary redundancy scheme was one process used in the council’s wider Savings and Transformation Programme which aims to save £40m by 2011.

The savings programme includes plans to shut Underhill House care home in Fallings Park and close care bungalows in Sweetman Street.