A council is looking for around 200 people to volunteer for redundancy or early retirement.

Calderdale Council is having to make £40m savings by 2017, a plan agreed by councillors at a budget meeting.

The offer to leave has been made to eligible all staff, including centrally employed teachers, and council staff who take early retirement will receive their pension on an unreduced basis.

Clr Geraldine Carter, Calderdale’s Cabinet Member for Resources, said: “The council faces some significant financial challenges over the next few years.

“We have developed these two voluntary schemes which for the first time we are making available to the majority of staff.

“During this period of change we also want to minimise the need for redundancies and make best use of the many strengths in our workforce.

“This means we will be supporting movement within the council through our Future Workforce Programme, which is helping us to retain talent, but at the same time meet our saving requirements by removing 200 posts by 2016.”

Calderdale expects to make a £600,000 saving in 2015/16 and £5.5m by 2016/17.

Staff who are aged under 55 before March 31, 2015 may be considered for voluntary severance if they have been with the council for two or more years. Those chosen will receive a lump sum payment when they leave.

Although the majority of staff are eligible to apply, there is no guarantee every application will be accepted as the council looks to balance skills, abilities, experience and knowledge, so the council has launched the Future Workforce Programme to give staff the chance to match their skills to new roles.

Clr Tim Swift, Labour and former council leader, said: “We’ve got to achieve savings in the next three years and retain a workforce that can continue to provide services going forward.

“The Future Workforce Programme gives people the option of doing something else and there will be an internal jobs market with opportunities for those who remain.

“The hope is that we avoid compulsory redundancies and there is still essential work to do.

“My feeling is that it’s going to be very difficult to maintain the same levels of service with more job losses, it’s one of the reasons we were looking at investment in IT and doing more online.

“Certainly the government grant set-up has mean we’ve had to make assumptions about future budgets, with no indication of the level in year three.

“And even when we do get the headline figures the small detail also means that there may be more changes to come, so that’s not helpful.”