Eastleigh residents are the latest to face an inflation-busting hike in their council tax charges.

Councillors last night agreed to increase charges by eight per cent.

Thousands of people whose homes fall into the band D category will have to fork out an average £51.32 extra after council tax figures for individual parishes have been added to the borough levy.

Bills landing on the doormats of band D households in the non-parished Eastleigh and Chandler's Ford area will be demands for £868.76 - an increase of £48.58.

Elsewhere in the borough, the band D levy will vary from £852.72 in Bishopstoke to £917.40 in Hound.

The variance is due to the differing figures set by the eight parish or town councils in the borough.

The decision comes just days after Southampton City Council agreed an average £80 increase on Band D households bring their annual bill to £831.90 - a rise of almost 11 per cent.

But defending the Eastleigh budget during the three-hour full council debate, leader Keith House claimed that tax increases over two years in the borough were one of Hampshire's lowest.

Last week council bosses came under fire from opposition councillors for this year's increase when 12 months ago, just before council elections, the tax rise was zero.

But Mr House said: "This budget protects levels of existing services, without reducing spending on front-line services.

"It makes direct provision for major capital projects to benefit the community.

"And it does so with a tax increase which, on average over the last two years, is lower than that of many other Hampshire councils at less than 13p a week."

As part of the council's upcoming financial package, £653,000 is to be ploughed into frontline services whilst £850,000 will be available for community projects.

An underspend in the current budget will be freed up to provide a possible cash kick-start to new community schemes of £200,000.

The highlight for the Lib Dems was, however, the council's groundbreaking scheme to ease public access to local services.

Launched yesterday, Eastleigh Direct - a round-the-clock internet, phone and e-mail information service - will benefit from an extra £80,000 freed up for IT developments in each of the next three years.

But members of the Labour group, which was defeated in its bid to put forward an alternative budget, called for greater emphasis to be placed on slashing subsidies to The Point, cutting down on over-charging and investing in new community services.

Group leader Peter Luffman said: "We believe we should give direct action and assistance to our local community.

"We charge them but we are not giving them the services that are going to improve the environment of the estates and the urban edges."

Tory leader Godfrey Olson accused the Lib Dems of failing to manage the council's finances effectively and of acting out of political expediency.

Mr Olson said: "It's not necessary to make that increase but I am sure that it's been made this year rather than next year when the whole of the council needs to seek re-election and this administration would not want to see a major increase in council tax at that time."