COVID-19 recovery plans must include measures to protect council workers from job cuts, a council leader has said.

Inverclyde Council leader Stephen McCabe said local authorities were facing “huge financial pressures” before the pandemic hit.

He told Glasgow City Region colleagues, including the leaders of seven other councils in Glasgow and the Clyde Valley, that saving public sector jobs should be part of recovery strategies.

The Labour councillor said arms-length organisations (ALEOs), such as leisure trusts, “rely heavily on footfall” but “are not seeing that footfall at the moment”.

“Clearly before Covid-19 struck we were under huge financial pressures; those financial pressures have obviously been exacerbated tenfold,” Mr McCabe added.

The City Region has laid out a 15-point programme which highlights priority areas for recovery.

These include a regional skills programme, a youth guarantee to help young people find an apprenticeship or job and a labour market programme for over 25s to support newly unemployed people back into work.

It also suggests additional financial support for businesses within the region.

Mr McCabe said it seems “a bit counterintuitive” that the City Region has strategies to “protect and sustain jobs in certain sectors” or “create alternative jobs in other sectors” and “train people for new jobs” when: “Potentially as a result of ongoing austerity we are going to be reducing our own workforce.”

“Surely part of our response should be making the case to Government that we should be protecting and sustaining jobs within the public sector.

“We should be making the case that we are already facing enormous challenges.

“It will only add to those challenges if as a result of financial decisions taken by Government, whether that be at a UK level or a Scottish level, we will have to cut back on our services, which will mean we have to reduce jobs.”

Kevin Rush, the region’s director of economic growth, said they had not looked specifically at public sector cuts.

“Our feeling would be that it is too early to do so as we do not understand the implications” he added.

Mr McCabe said: “The reality for an area like Inverclyde is the biggest single employer is the council, the second biggest employer is the NHS.

“These are important good quality jobs, that we can ill afford to lose at any time, but we can certainly ill afford to lose at this time.”

Glasgow City Council leader Susan Aitken said: “We are waiting to find out what the UK Government proposes to do about that [lost income for local authorities], and whether ALEOs will be included.”

She said councils in Scotland have to argue “very, very strongly” for their inclusion.

“Even with that kind of package, the scale of what Glasgow Life has, in terms of lost ticket income, it is not just leisure trust, for the Concert Hall and for all those other venues is very, very significant.

“The tail on that is an ongoing challenge, probably well into next year.”

Ms Aitken said the City Region’s intelligence hub will consider Mr McCabe’s suggestion and report back to a future meeting.