Dozens of council staff in Wolverhampton have been allowed to leave through a voluntary redundancy scheme.

Today bosses said they could not rule out compulsory job losses as they work to save £97 million by 2016 in the wake of massive cuts in government funding.

A total of 64 members of staff at Wolverhampton City Council were released under the council’s scheme which launched in November and closed in June.

Council bosses say the combined salaries for the posts came to £1.3m and redundancy payments totalled £538,097.70.

The biggest loss of staff came in the adults and community department, which runs social services, with 25 staff allowed to leave. A further 19 went in regeneration and environment and 16 in customer and shared services.

Four people volunteered to leave in children and young people’s services.

The council had invited up to 173 people to take voluntary redundancy. A total of 6,400 people work for the council outside of schools.

Conservative Councillor Joan Stevenson, who oversees the council’s human resources department, said: “We still have no idea what the full extent of the Government’s spending cuts will be and we will not know until the comprehensive spending review in October. It is impossible to rule out compulsory redundancies.

“We had 173 people apply for voluntary redundancy but depending on their jobs the council had to decide whether or not it could allow them to leave. There were many things to consider such as whether the post could be deleted and the effect it would have on the pension fund.

“We are supporting our staff and trying to help them to do the best thing for them.”

The pensions black hole in the West Midlands is currently an estimated £3.3 billion.

The figure leaves more than 105,000 public sector workers facing a shortfall in their pensions by the time they retire unless funds improve dramatically. The councils of the Black Country and Birmingham pay into the West Midlands Metropolitan Authorities Pension fund (WMPF) administered by Wolverhampton City Council.

Councils across the region are expecting to lose more than £300m in funding from central government after the review in October. Wolverhampton is currently preparing to make cuts of £70m in response, on top of a further £27m it has already been making this year and last

It has been estimated by opposition Labour leader Councillor Roger Lawrence that as many as 2,000 of the 12,465 people who work for Wolverhampton City Council could lose their jobs.

However council bosses have so far not been able to predict how many jobs will go.