UNION leaders in Sefton are locked in talks with council chiefs in a desperate bid to avoid a mass cull of staff.

Workers were put on notice that 400 jobs could be lost in a huge cost-cutting drive earlier this month.

Now the borough’s Unison branch has proposed a raft of potential savings to senior councillors.

They are now negotiating how some of their proposals could work in practice.

Sefton needs to cut up to £15m of spending by the end of March next year.

And after that its budget black hole could stretch to £30m over the next three years.

It is widely feared many staff could be forced out through compulsory redundancies.

Sefton’s Unison branch secretary Glen Williams pitched the ideas to Sefton’s cabinet last Wednesday.

Since then he has been in talks with council officers to talk them through.

Mr Williams said: “We submitted a report and alternative budget options for the cabinet to discuss and to be fair they gave them some credibility.

“We have proposed a whole raft of practical ways that money can be saved.”

Mr Williams said they included curbing the “millions” the council spends on consultants and agency workers as well as beefing up the way council tax dodgers are dealt with.

Unison also made a bid for the redundancy package on offer to be improved in the hope more staff would volunteer to go, rather than seeing scores of staff forced out.