SOUTHAMPTON City Council Tory chiefs have drawn up a draft budget which will see 128 jobs axed, services slashed and council tax rises – to plug an £11.3m black hole in the budget.

Charges for council services will be hiked as the council’s tax bill for the average band D home rises to £1,213 from April.

Finance bosses have spent months wrestling over the deficit between income and what they need to spend to keep services such as libraries, day centres and leisure centres open.

They insist most of it, around £7.2m, will be plugged by efficiency savings made by introducing better ways of working.

A resurrected proposal to offer a ten per cent discount to pensioner households and waive council tax for police special constables will cost taxpayers about £1.3m, or 1.68 per cent off the council tax bill.

Adult and social services will bear the brunt of the savings, amounting to £2.3m.

Radical shake-up The budget reveals for the first time the full extent of a radical shake-up of the way 1,200 elderly and disabled residents in Southampton receive home care with a reduction in number of firms it uses from 19 to five.

The controversial move will save the council around £1m, with 15 jobs axed and 25 vacant posts lost.

The council is also set to squeeze private care homes – offering a paltry one per cent rise in charges. The Hampshire Care Association is warning it could put some homes at risk of closure.

Disability groups are also warning hundreds of vulnerable and elderly Southampton residents will be driven into poverty and priced out of home care under a shake-up of the council’s charging policy to make it “simpler”. Nine hundred will pay more, raising an extra £462,000.

Robert Droy, a team leader at the Southampton Centre for Independent Living, said it penalised those that had made savings and called the proposed rise in contributions from disposable income “draconian”.

“More and more disabled people will be driven into poverty and people may go without essential care they need because they are worried about having to pay for it,” he said.

Children’s services also take a big hit to close a £2.3m hole in the education budget.

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Despite strong protests, Southampton Voluntary Services is set to lose a £105,000 grant next year that pays more than half the costs of its family projects service.

It works with at least 105 families each week to offer long-term support to tackle a range of issues from domestic violence and drug abuse to debt, rape, mental illness and behavioural problems.

Team leader Di Barnes said more than half the groups would have to fold and staff would be axed.

Money spent on children with behaviour problems is to be slashed despite pupils in Southampton’s secondary schools being declared among worst behaved in the country.

A total of £280,000, spent by schools on extra learning support assistants to help pupils with behaviour problems, will be cut.

The Tories argue the schools get the cash to cover them directly from their Government grants.

There are also plans to close four of five play areas to save £163,000.

Elsewhere the Tories want to cut spending on tourism publicity and consultants, and slash translation services to the legal minimum.

The council’s contribution to the city’s “safety camera partnership” would be cut by £120,000, however it is thought speed cameras will be unaffected.

Schools will be charged more for waste collection, and a previously agreed hike in car parking charges, averaging six per cent, among other parking income will raise £375,000. Controversial cremation fee hikes – from £450 to £600 – will help bring in an extra £150,000.

Bus subsidies will be trimmed, with funding for the free City Loop service removed.

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

Despite a 75-name petition the Cabinet wants to press ahead with plans to relocate the Ropewalk Neighbourhood Advice Centre in Derby Road to the Civic Centre.

Users are worried they will miss out on convenient housing and benefits advice and help with forms.

In leisure and heritage, investment in self-scanning technology will allow the council to get rid of the equivalent of seven-and-a-half full-time librarians, saving £137,000.

Libraries in Thornhill and Weston will also close at quieter times, and The Quays swimming and diving centre will close half an hour earlier at 9pm on weekdays, and its café will be replaced with a vending machine. The fund to replace and buy new books will be raided for £100,000.

However, Cabinet chiefs are reconsidering whether they will axe free swimming for under-12s, which has around 2,600 children registered. They are in talks to sign up external funding to help plug a shortfall in a Government grant to give all under 16s free swimming. The council claims the grant will cover just a quarter of the costs.

The city’s coroner may find himself on the end of higher charges to hire his court room among other council rent rises.

A merger of youth services, Connexions and other after school activity teams will save up to £421,000 a year. The Connexions centre in Above Bar Street has already shut.

Among spending initiatives the council will continue to pump more cash into slowing the decline of its crumbling roads, put cash into a programme to replace around two thirds of old lampposts, and contribute almost £1m towards the project costs of rebuilding up to five secondary schools.

There are also proposals to build a grass mini-golf course at the disused bowling green at East Park.

First budget

Last year Tories seized full control of the council in May elections, meaning the city can expect its first Conservative budget in 24 years to pass largely intact.

Cabinet member for resources councillor Jeremy Moulton said: “Despite crippling under funding from the Government and the difficulties of the recession we are delivering the lowest council tax increase in the city’s history.

“In addition we will have a ten per cent discount for pensioners. As well as keeping council tax down we are reprioritising council spending so that more money is going into repairing the roads, into schools, protecting vulnerable children and improving streetlighting.”

The Cabinet will meet on February 2 to agree the proposals which will be recommended to the Tory run council on February 18.

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