CASH-STRAPPED civic chiefs in Southampton will plead with chancellor George Osborne to stave off further cuts to services for the city’s most vulnerable residents.

Labour council leader Simon Letts will write to ministers and ask them to protect the authority’s social care budgets from further cutbacks.

Opposition councillors have warned that the council is facing a “financial meltdown” but Labour have hit back by insisting they have a plan to bring the city’s finances to order.

As previously reported they are battling with a £39 million budget gap for 2016/17 which increases to £48 million when extra pressures on the adult and children’s social care budgets are included.

Their budget proposals, which go out for an eight week consultation today, could see 183 jobs axed and council tax rise by 1.99 per cent again in a bid to meet the gap.

They say a large percentage of the savings will come from the transformation programme to provide more services online, while other plans include cutting the number of top managers, plus the parks and open spaces team and merging the trading standards, environmental health and port health teams.

But they still need to find another £12 million for next year alone and say they must find £90 million in total over the next four years.

During a frequently stormy council meeting yesterday the first set of budget proposals for £9.3 million of savings were approved and Labour put forward a motion calling on Cllr Letts to write to Mr Osborne and secretary of state for local government Greg Clark about future cutbacks.

They say they are facing an ever-increasing demand for adult and children’s social care and are calling for both budgets to be protected when the government announces fresh saving proposals in the autumn statement.

Labour also say that cuts to the council’s public health budget, which were announced after it was set, will put further strain on services and that it would not be cost effective for the government to cut social care as it will force more pressure onto local NHS budgets instead.

The Conservatives had supported sending an amended letter to the government about the in-year public health cuts but leader Jeremy Moulton accused Cllr Letts of “politicking”

by making the motion political but also saying that he wanted a consensus from all councillors.

Cllr Moulton said the Conservatives would write to the government separately and that he “did not think in-year public health cuts are right” but party finance spokesman John Hannides labelled Labour “hypocrites”, saying the Conservative government was fixing the mess that “Labour had created”.

Cllr Moulton again made a gloomy prediction about the state of the city’s finances in future years, saying: “I think we will get through next year but I think the next year we will be facing financial meltdown – Labour doesn’t have a plan.”

But Labour finance chief Mark Chaloner hit back, saying: “We are not in financial meltdown, I wish you would stop scaremongering. We have a plan.”