The Northern Ireland Housing Executive is axing 500 jobs over the next four years.

These redundancies, which will see one in every six employees being let go, have been implement as a direct result of budget cuts.

Housing chiefs are required to streamline administration and staffing costs.

A spokesman said: "A number of the losses have already taken place but overall it does involve 500 jobs from a total workforce of about 3,000."

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Heather Cousins, a senior DSD official, told the Belfast Telegraph the job losses "will take place over the next four-year period. It will happen as a result of some areas of work being scaled down.

"For example, we do not have a lot of capital grant money; therefore, the activity on grants in the Housing Executive is much reduced.

"The staff are still there at the moment, so there is scope for them to be redeployed or, indeed, to seek voluntary redundancies".

(LB/CD)