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CHILDREN will be deprived of a vital "life skill" under Tory budget plans to save £10m and give residents a below inflation council tax rise next year.

The proposal to axe free swimming for under-sevens will affect almost 5,000 children who signed up to the popular scheme, launched last summer.

It is one of the controversial cuts contained in a hit list drawn up by ruling Conservative councillors, which includes 116 job cuts.

Julia Passingham, from Hampshire Amateur Swimming Association, said the move flew in the face of a national strategy to get more children to learn to swim and would hit poorer families "It's diabolical really," she said. "It's a big incentive to encourage children into swimming. The aim is every child should have the opportunity to swim whatever their background. Swimming is a life skill it's not just a sport."

She also criticised plans to close Oaklands Leisure Centre at weekends, from 11.30am on Saturday "It's the ideal time for families to go swimming. It's recreational time for children to build up their confidence through play. It the worst time to close. The other leisure centres won't be able to cope with the numbers."

Among the other cuts and savings in the draft £166m budget, library and St Mary's Leisure Centre hours will be reduced and the oral history unit will be axed along with the council's ethnic minority language service.

Funding will be also withdrawn from play services and those to tackle badly behaved children.

Family centres will be effectively merged into Sure Start children's centres while three cricket pitches and four football sports pitches will be closed.

Little used bus routes could be axed as the council withdraws subsidies from operators.

Neighbourhood partnerships, seen as an ineffective "talking shop" by Tory chiefs will be scrapped and more support given to residents' associations.

The budget would also withdraw £106,000 which pays for union representation of staff.

The budget savings fall most heavily on children's services which will shed a total of £2.8m. There are also plans to raise £1.1m by hiking charges.

Charges will be introduced for replacement bins and fridge/freezer collections, while those for museums and car parking go up.

Community care charges will go up by ten per cent.

Christine Morris, Central Neighbourhood Partnership chairman, was outraged at the plan to scrap the programme.

Ms Morris said the proposal was "disgusting" and would prevent the community from influencing future council decisions.

She blamed council leader Alec Samuels, who she claimed had been at loggerheads with the partnership for three years and had finally "got his own way", without any prior consultation.

"They don't want the community to have a say," she blasted.

Di Barnes, family projects team leader with Southampton Voluntary Services, said she was anxious to see how the family centres would be affected.

"They certainly have their place. We would sorely miss them," she added.

The budget has already been attacked by opposition politician and unions who accused the Tories of U-turns and hypocrisy.

Tory chiefs insisted more money will be spent on children services and the elderly.

Cabinet member for children's services Councillor Peter Baillie said much of his savings were passing costs to the ringfenced schools budget which comes directly from the government and gone up more than the council's grant.

"A lot of it is things the council has been left to pay for which it shouldn't have done," he said.

The budget also contains a ten per cent council tax discount for over-65s, an election pledge costing £1.2m.

It will benefit 11,500 households of all over 65s - but elderly people would have to apply for it. Special constables living and working in the city would pay no council tax.

Tory councillors published their budget five months early to avoid last minute horse-trading and allow better forward planning.

Cllr Jeremy Moulton, Cabinet member for finance, said the savings were a result of a rotten deal from central Government which unfairly hit Southampton - the most deprived city in the wealthy south.

A likely freeze on Government grant, thousands of uncounted eastern European migrants using services, and an expensive national free bus travel plan for the elderly, had put up costs, he said.

Consultation on draft budget the will run until February. It must then be approved by the deadlocked full council.