DARTMOOR National Park Authority has announced it is shedding 15.8 full-time equivalent staff and merging two directorates after a cut in its Defra funding.

In the next four years its grant will be cut by 21.6 per cent. This comes on top of a five per cent cut last year, which led to a loss of a dozen full time equivalent posts.

When the latest round of redundancies are taken into account, the park has lost a quarter of its staff.

Chief executive Kevin Bishop confirmed there will be compulsory redundancies, as the scale of cuts could not be absorbed through voluntary redundancies and early retirement.

'We went through an assessment and selection process last week and we are now in the process of formal notification of redundancy,' he said.

'These are very hard times. We are given a fixed budget and we can only spend what we have got in income.

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