More than 270 Southampton City Council jobs will go after it approved £21million of savings

The Labour-run council approved £21m of savings in its 2016/17 budget today, as well as the housing budget.

That means that council tax will rise by 1.99 per cent, although a planned hike of four per cent was scrapped.

The meeting continued after it was interrupted for more than an hour after hecklers were ordered to leave but then refused to go.

Police officers were called but the men eventually agreed to remain and keep quiet.

The budget proposals were put before the council after the budget gap for 2016/17 reduced from £39m to £33.7m after a better-than-expected Government financial settlement.

However the budget still contained plans for 183 jobs, of which 31 are vacant, to go as well as the Government-approved 1.99 per cent tax hike to pay for the rising cost of social care.

Many of the savings are being made through the council becoming more reliant on digital services, which is part of the ongoing transformation programme.

This means that instead of a person going through a council officer to renew their parking permit, for example, they will instead do it online themselves.

The council says provision is in place for elderly and vulnerable people who will be unable to do this themselves.

PICTURED: Southampton City Council leader Simon Letts

They are also reducing the number of top managers from 21 to 12, charging developers for the cost of new wheelie bins, cutting the park and open spaces teams and integrating the environmental health, trading standards and port health services teams.

Those proposals were put forward in August and November of last year, and will now be implemented from April 1.

However they still had to find an extra £12m to fill the budget gap, and a final set of proposals to save £8m were put forward last week and will now go out for consultation with a final decision due in the summer.

Measures include changes to shift patterns at Itchen Bridge, where three jobs would go, children's services efficiencies, increased fees and charges, moving some agency staff onto permanent contracts to save £590,000.

Finally the council would put in parking restrictions around the Royal South Hants Hospital to raise £150,000 and restructure upper middle managers saving £2.5million.

The remaining £3.9m will come from the council’s reserves.

Also approved was the council’s housing budget, with 94 jobs - 57 of which are currently vacant – to be axed over the next four years, including a number of management positions.

The council says £1.4m a year will come from more work being done in-house as opposed to through sub-contractors, and £700,000 from reducing the number of managers.

Many savings are predicted to come from making the housing service work more efficiently, while some proposals to increase income by £279,000 a year have also been put forward.

Council leader Simon Letts criticised the Government's "shambolic" economic plan and said: "We are the party with a solid economic plan, a plan for the city and a vision going forward and I hope that when we put the vision to the people of Southampton in May [at the local elections] they fully endorse it.

Conservative finance spokesman John Hannides attacked Labour’s record, saying: "Labour are bereft of principles and they lack a cogent set of priorities. They have no vision, so strategy and this budget is just like the previous three - driven by panic and chaos, it's ill thought-out and made up of short term savings."

Anti-cuts councillor Keith Morrell said Labour had "failed miserably to win the trust and confidence of the city", while Cllr Pope accused the Labour leadership of having a "revolving door of failure".

Liberal Democrat and former councillor Adrian Vinson praised Labour for using efficiencies to find much of the budget gap, but also accused them of a "lack of leadership and courage".