More than half of property people in local authorities are worried about losing their jobs as a result of government spending cuts, a PublicPropertyUK.com survey suggests.

Today, PublicPropertyUK.com and public sector jobs site jobsgopublic.com have published the results of their survey, How will spending cuts affect you and your job?

It reveals widespread fear over spending cuts among the 121 respondents working in property and planning in the public sector.

Of 82 respondents in local authorities, 57% said they were either quite worried or very worried about losing their jobs,  while 60% revealed that they were worried about a blanket freeze on public sector recruitment.

Nine out of ten local authority respondents said this would place strain on their bodies’ ability to carry out work.

There are also fears over the ability of public sector organisations to make spending cuts, with around 40% of people in local authorities saying their organisation was either not at all or not very well positioned to make cuts.

The same number disagreed with the Coalition’s policy of making quick cuts to public spending.

Bob Perry, president of the Association of Chief Estates Surveyors, said: “This is clearly a worrying time for all property people employed in local government and the wider public sector.

“Staff costs are always the largest element in any employer’s budget, and we all know that authorities will now be carefully considering not only what staff they need, but also whether they can affords to continue to employ them.

“No doubt some slack will be taken up by job-sharing, reduced-hours working and voluntary redundancies, but there must now be a very real chance of compulsory redundancies within some parts of the public sector.

“The old cliché about the public sector offering jobs for life has never been correct, but in the present climate it’s even less true.”

See the slideshow below for the full results of the survey:

• Job cuts undermine council property
• CBI pledges support for property cuts by coalition
• Councils prepare to make 25,000 job cuts
• Public property savings harder for Scots than English