RULING Tories were last night preparing to dismiss Southampton council workers and re-hire them on worse contracts to force through mass pay cuts in most savage cuts in the history of the authority.

In just under two hours, Tory councillors yesterday agreed annual spending plans of £191m after finding record savings to plug a £25m budget black hole.

Council leader Royston Smith asked council workers who packed the public gallery and earlier protested in their hundreds outside: “What is better: a job with slightly less money of no job at all?”

Full list of Southampton Council cuts and savings - Click Here

Southampton Council Budget Report - Click Here

Some 205 jobs and 40 senior managers out of the 6,000-plus workforce, excluding teachers, will be axed. But staff on less than £17,000 will get a £250 pay rise. And those on over £22,000 will get five days more holiday.

Thousands of union members are being balloted on pay cuts of between two and 5.5 per cent and are expected to reject them, paving the way for strike action. The result will be announced next week.

Cllr Smith said the pay cuts would protect 400 more jobs from being axed over the next two years.

Burial costs will rise, council rents will be hiked, public toilets and day centres will be shut and more city bus services will be axed.

Older people and the disabled will be among those most affected as the cost of meals on wheels goes up and they are made to pay to cross the Itchen Bridge.

The biggest cuts will be made in adult social care where the budget will be slashed by £3.2m and all non-statutory voluntary sector contracts will be axed.

Council finance boss Councillor Jeremy Moulton said libraries, leisure centres and SureStart centres were being kept open and weekly bin collections would remain.

At the same time the council was increasing the money spent fixing roads and pavements, and more social workers will be hired to plug a shortage.

Council tax will be frozen for the first time, at £1,446.84 for an average Band D property, and pensioners will continue to receive a ten per cent discount.

He said about 40 per cent of staff will get the pay rise.

Labour finance spokesmen Cllr Peter Marsh-Jenks condemned the Tory budget as an “all out attack” on the people of Southampton and an “ideological attack on public services”. He predicted widespread Tory councillor redundancies in local elections in May.

Lib Dem group leader Cllr Adrian Vinson said the Tories had “turned a tough challenge into a crisis and a catastrophe for the council and the city”.

He said they were “hell-bent on putting their sacred cows before vital front-line services”.

Tories and Lib Dem councillors yesterday voluntarily agreed to cut their allowances. The Labour group declined to comment.