THE chief executive of Worcestershire County Council has issued a rallying call to her workforce - saying she knows they will be "anxious" about the future.

Clare Marchant has insisted she will be "open and honest" about the challenges ahead, referring to County Hall's "constantly shrinking pavilions" as it battles to transform itself in the face of unprecedented pressure.

As your Worcester News revealed last week, the authority believes it needs to save around £100 million by 2019 in response to plunging Government funding and severe demographic pressures.

The forecast comes at a time when it is looking to commission out around 85 per cent of services to other providers by 2018 under a new operating model which could lead to 1,500 in-house job losses.

Ms Marchant has now done a Q&A with county councillors as part of her new annual report, which reflects on the past 12 months.

During the debate she reiterated the massive challenges ahead, telling them she was determined to take the staff with her.

"We do, and we will continue to spend £1 million pounds a day - this is what Worcestershire residents have entrusted to you as councillors and what you've entrusted to me and my officers to deliver services in the best way possible," she said.

"But it's a challenge - I won't shy away from that.

"I work with around 3,000 'full-time equivalent' staff, so that's around 4,000 staff and there's a mixture of people who are absolutely up for this and people who are anxious.

"But I'm massively proud of the efforts of our staff.

"I walk around and see our constantly shrinking pavilions - because we're waiting for partners to move in - and there's an absolute passion from all of them to make this work and make this a local government organisation for the future."

She also said she was fully prepared to say "sorry" for any mistakes, citing the safety errors at Worcester's Ketch island - and told councillors every commissioning move would be something to learn from.

"Do we learn things from commissioning? We absolutely do learn things, we learn how to do it better next time," she said.

"I'm absolutely upfront that we must communicate very effectively about how we are commissioning, we put a lot of effort into that and we're not afraid to say when we have made a mistake, to move on and learn from it."

The comments follow the saga over private firm Babcock taking on 391 school support staff only to announce proposals to axe up to 103 roles three weeks in.

During the Q&A she also told councillors the demographic pressures is what is really driving the need to change, rather than Government grant funding, citing growing numbers of very elderly people and the high number of children in care (716 now).

"The biggest thing is actually the demographics," she said.

"The number of frail and elderly we have, the number of children in care, that is where we really need to really put quite a lot of focus."

* The chief executive's new Annual Report 2015 has been published, 14 pages delving into real detail about the last year, the challenges ahead and some key statistics. To see it click HERE.