THE Brecon Beacons National Park is expected to confirm later today how it will slash spending by more than £200,000 including shedding staff.

The park authority has been consulting with staff since early January on eight proposed redundancies as well as seeking their views on how to respond to a 4.7% cut in its funding from the Welsh Government.

Park members are meeting behind closed doors at their Brecon HQ to confirm the detailed budget proposals.

Those include proposals to close the Waterfalls Centre at Pontneddfechan and its information service at the main National Park Visitor Centre, known as the Mountain Centre, at Libanus.

The Mountain Centre will remain open even if its information service is closed.

If park members agreed to the plans any staff subject to redundancy will be notified immediately.

Park authority chairman Melanie Doel told the public session of the meeting: "We have to make very difficult decisions about our own budget.

"We do have to achieve a balanced budget. We have received a number of correspondence and we thank people for those

"We will be talking about people and their jobs and it is only right we do that privately for their sakes."

Members were also told 1,859 people have signed a petition in support of the visitor centre.

Earlier during the meeting park members approved the budget for the 2016/17 year which will reduce the budget by £221,000. The 4.7% cut meant the park needed to save £218,000.

Chief executive John Cook said as the Welsh Government had only confirmed the park’s budget a week before Christmas it isn’t possible to make all of the savings before April.

The budget includes a bridging loan of between £65,000 to £70,000 to be taken from reserves."

Mr Cook said staff in the consultation had suggested foregoing an anticipated 1% pay rise in order to avoid redundancies.

The chief executive said he believed staff should be paid in line with the rate of inflation and if the park decided against paying a national agreed increase it would have to begin local pay negotiations.

Other proposals include saving £70,000 reducing the amount of office spaces it leases from Dyfed Powys Police at its Plas y Ffynnon HQ and sharing IT services with the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park.

Park cuts latest, see next week’s Brecon & Radnor Express