Kingston College is set to axe 20 jobs and cut foreign language courses after overspending and government cuts left it facing a £2.5m deficit next year, a move unions warned could lead to industrial action.

The restructuring programme, which will reduce the college’s £30m budget by 8 per cent, has left 95 staff members’ jobs at risk but aims to minimise disruption to frontline services.

New principal Peter Mayhew-Smith warned that the college faced a £1m loss of funding when he took over from Neil Sinnamon in April, but said the figures had got “worse and worse” since then.

He said: “Over a period of time income levels have just declined. We will have the staffing for a £32m college but we are now a £30m college.

“The deficit is made up of lots of different bits and pieces. It’s a mixture of overspending in some of our departments. It’s a bit of not meeting some of our income targets. Some student tuition fees we have not been successfully brought in.”

The college has about 11,000 students and currently employs the equivalent of 550 full time staff, with administrative and management posts bearing the brunt of the cuts, although union sources said four lecturers would also be lost.

Mr Mayhew-Smith said: “One of the principles we wanted to adopt was that we wanted to protect frontline delivery. We wanted to earn our way out rather than cut our way out.”

Lecturers in colleges in Birmingham, Bradford and Wolverhampton have threatened strike action over cuts, but Kingston College reported its 10 per cent cut in adult education funding was less than expected.

University and College Union branch secretary Peter Yiannakou, who teaches accountancy, said he had previously asked the management whether it was handling money correctly, but praised the new principal for wide consultation on the restructuring.

He said: “He has been quite open and informed people and even proposed a pay cut for himself, but when it gets to the nitty gritty, when people start appealing for jobs and they get told no, that’s when all the nastiness could come out.

“We are not scared to come out but we are not militant. We would go out if there was cause there. When we know who has got a job and who has not we will look at whether they have been treated fairly.”