PEOPLE across Southampton are to get the city’s lowest ever council tax rise – but it comes at a cost.

Tory council chiefs last night steamrollered through their first budget in 24 years in just over two hours.

They agreed a council tax rise of 2.94 per cent.

But their spending plans axed 128 jobs and contained a raft of cuts, savings, and higher charges to plug a massive £11.2m black hole in the £179m budget.

Southampton City Council’s tax rise, coupled with 3.6 per cent and 4.8 per cent tax hike rises agreed by fire and police authorities, will push the total bill for an average Band D house in the city to £1,411 – a 3.15 per cent rise overall.

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Opposition councillors failed to win any compromises from the Conservatives, who were swept to power last May with their first majority in the council chamber in a generation.

Councillor Jeremy Moulton, Cabinet member for finance, said the recession and “miserly” Government funding had brought the city to its knees.

But he said the Tories had managed to meet a pledge to keep council tax below inflation while investing in rebuilding up to five secondary schools, halting the decline of the city’s “shameful” roads, replacing around two thirds of old lampposts, and providing money to hire extra social workers to help protect the city’s children.

Conservatives also revived a divisive proposal to offer a ten per cent council tax discount to pensioner households and exempt police special constables from the levy.

But Labour finance spokesman councillor Peter Marsh-Jenks said the budget was a “Con’s con”, lacked ambition, “sacrificed services to the god of Mammon” and repaid elections bribes to rich pensioners.

He slammed a cut to a £280,000 social inclusion fund to help schools tackle children with behaviour problems and provide extra activities and hit out at six per cent above inflation car parking charges.

He said Labour would have tackled issues such as fuel poverty and binge drinking with new initiatives.

Lib Dem finance spokesman Councillor Steve Sollitt blasted the Tory budget as “destructive”, objecting to a budget that cuts library hours and the city’s book fund while promising the return of axed Christmas lights.

Among the Tory cuts, adult and social services took the brunt of the savings, amounting to £2.3m.

The controversial shake-up of the way more than a thousand elderly and disabled residents get home care will save the council around £1m, with 15 carers to be sacked and 25 vacant jobs axed.

In leisure and heritage, investment in self-scanning technology will allow the council to get rid around a dozen parttime librarians, saving £137,000.

The Quays swimming complex will close half an hour earlier on weekdays, and the café will be replaced with a vending machine. Staff there will be asked do some cleaning to help cut five jobs.

Six neighbourhood wardens will be fired and the service focussed on council estates to save £190,000.

A further ten jobs, including four vacant posts, will go in shake-ups up of parks and street cleaning. The council will cut back on the groundsmen and use more temporary staff in the summer.

Elsewhere, various middle management and professional jobs across the council will be lost.

The council’s Unison branch secretary Mike Tucker, said: “The council is making real people redundant.We are not saying council workers should be treated any differently but if it employs less front line workers the services people get will suffer.”

Mr Tucker said that around a dozen staff had already been handed notices following the Conservatives’ “mini-budget” last summer.