Highland Council employs more than 10,000 staff

Councillors want to save �20m from the local authority's annual budget over the next three years.

The aim is to maximise efficiencies while minimising service cuts as the jobs are shed by 2009.

Council leaders are confident that people will see little change to day-to-day services like education, roads maintenance and social work.

The posts of 40 senior managers are set to go as part of the job cuts.

Many of the jobs will be lost in housing and property services as the authority seeks to transfer council homes to a housing association.

However, some councillors have expressed concern that the authority would have to rely too heavily on private consultants after losing such high-level expertise.