COUNCILLORS in Southampton today agreed to freeze council tax and axe two hundred jobs to help plug a £14m budget hole.

Ruling Tories froze the city's council tax for a second year, excluding police and fire levies, at £1,239 for a typical band D home in Southampton, while saving £13.8m to help meet a £57m budget shortfall over the next three years following Government funding cuts.

Ahead of the crunch budget meeting, unions staged a rally outside the Civic Centre in protest at controversial pay cuts of between two and 5.5 per cent brought in one year ago. Last year bin men stormed the council chamber.

Anti-cuts campaigners addressed the full meeting of city councillors.

Conservatives claim three-quarters of the savings will come from efficiencies and that frontline services and jobs would be protected.

Around 99 redundancies are proposed, fewer than half compulsory.

Tories pledged to protect libraries and sure start centres, freeze charges for car parking and meals on wheels, strip out layers of management, get better deals from suppliers and share service with other councils to cuts cost.

Unions blasted a move by Tory council chiefs to set aside £600,000 of "workers pay" to meet legal claims over the controversial wage cuts that could cost the council up to £12m.

Councillors clashed over a ten per cent council discount for pensioners which Labour and Lib Dems wanted to halve to avert some of the cuts.