TORFAEN council will have to find £40 million of savings in the next four years with the authority warning they face “a massive challenge” to maintain services.

And the authority is nowset to ask residents what services they see as vital, and what they could do without.

The stark warning came in an exclusive interview with the council’s cabinet member for resources, Anthony Hunt, who said significant cuts were inevitable and that he could not guarantee that job losses at the authority would not be part of the pain.

Cllr Hunt said Torfaen, which currently has a budget of £170m and employs 5,456 people, wanted to be open with the public about the financial reality they face after the UK Government’s recent spending review confirmed local government will again see budget cuts.

He said they had “an open door policy” on ideas from the public about what services they want to see protected urging: “We want to hear from residents about which services they value most, what they could do without and what they’d be prepared to pay more for.”

Asked what services might be cut, Cllr Hunt said: “We are not at that stage yet.”

But pressed on the issue of job losses he replied: “I value our employees, they’re the greatest asset of any council.

“But I would simply be lying if I said I guaranteed people won’t lose their jobs.”

A report by Torfaen’s chief financial officer, Nigel Aurelius will go before cabinet next week laying out the authority’s midterm financial plan for the four years from the 2014-15 budget.

Torfaen has already saved £33 million in the last five years and Cllr Hunt used an analogy of low lying fruit on trees, saying obvious efficiency savings and cuts had already been picked, and that it was getting progressively harder not to cut services he knows residents value.

Cllr Hunt said: “We will pursue efficiencies relentlessly and look at innovative ways of working to reduce costs where we can, but difficult and uncomfortable decisions are inevitable.

“We must look at the local services we provide, consider our priorities and look at how they impact on our desire to protect the most vulnerable people in our communities.”

He admitted: “It’s a bleak starting point. But we have to see it as a challenge.”

Cllr Hunt said he felt council tax rises weren’t the answer, because households were under so much pressure already and he also felt that using the council’s reserves would neither be desirable, nor touch the sides in terms of finding the money they needed, and then they’d be gone forever.

The Labour councillor, who is also a researcher for Torfaen MPPaul Murphy, laid the blame at the door of the Government’s austerity policies.

In a plea to the UK Government, Cllr Hunt said: “My message to the UK Government would be that their austerity policies are hitting local services hard.”