Asking for voluntary redundancies at DH's work - sign of things to come?

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My DH works in a large FE college which by and large is busy and courses are full. They have recently asked for voluntary redundancies - 50 have shown interest, mostly those close to retirement according to DH.

I am terrified that they are doing this voluntary stuff first and the next step is compulsory redundancy. DH is all breezy and says it is just a cost cutting exercise but I am totally unconvinced.

He is not a teacher or a tutor.

The college will know how much they need to cut to match their budget - if they can reduce their costs enough by people volunteering, then that may mean they don't need to do any more. The tricky bit is if their budget then gets cut again, and there's nobody left who wants to take a severance deal, but it may not come to that, so don't worry about it at this stage. It's definitely not inevitable.

job losses in the public sector are really coming into force now, the reality will hit when we realise how many services will go :(