Public sector funding cuts are to blame for a 30 per cent increase the number of charity sector staff being made redundant in Wales, according to the results of the Wales Council for Voluntary Action interim State of the Sector survey.

Out of nearly 300 organisations employing staff that took part in WCVA’s latest survey in January, 54 reported making redundancies with a total of 147 staff members being made redundant in the last 12 months. This was an increase from the 47 charities making 113 redundancies, as of January 2014.

The survey also shows that more employees in more organisations are now at risk of being made redundant with 305 different jobs at risk across 92 charities. This is worse than the results for surveys conducted in 2014 and 2013, where 286 and 211 jobs were labelled at risk respectively.

Bryan Collis, senior research officer at WCVA, said that funding cuts by both the Welsh government and local authorities were predominantly to blame.

“The report shows that the sector is more unhappy than this time last year and is certainly feeling the pinch from cuts in funding from local authorities and Welsh Government,” he said.

The survey also suggests that the financial situations of many Welsh charities have rapidly deteriorated with 28 per cent of survey responders saying that their financial situation had ‘worsened’ in the last three months. Some 44 per cent of organisations predicted that their finances would ‘get worse’ over the next year.

“This survey has confirmed that prediction - organisations are not able to maintain staff levels and they see a bleak future because of cuts from the public sector and other funders,” said Collis.

“The levels of staff redundancies have returned to those experienced during the recession years. We need the next round of EU funding to start quickly, but that only helps part of the sector.”

The survey also said that finding volunteers was becoming more difficult as those between the ages of 25 and 50 needed to “balance work and family commitments”.