UNIONS have warned services will suffer after civic chiefs in Southampton agreed to axe 120 jobs and make £8m of cuts to deliver an average council tax rise of £35.

For the second year running Southampton City Council agreed the lowest tax rise in the history of the authority – just 2.5 per cent.

Special constables will get a full discount for the first time and pensioner households will continue to be able to claim ten per cent off their bills.

Ruling Tories steamrollered through their £183m spending plans in little over 90 minutes with few concessions to opposition councillors.

Finance boss councillor Jeremy Moulton proclaimed a “value for money” budget delivering record efficiencies which protected frontline services.

“The council is plugging the gap by becoming meaner and leaner than ever before,” he said.

But the budget provoked a threat of industrial action from the council’s Unison branch secretary Mike Tucker. He said library staff would consider industrial action after it was agreed to replace staff with volunteers.

He said: “They have not listened to anything we have said. We are very dissapointed with the political decisions the council has taken. We believe that services will suffer and believe the council is spending money on its political agenda when it should be spending money on improving services for the people of Southampton.”

Tories made fixing the roads a central plank of their spending plans, hiking annual roads spending by £800,000 and bringing forward £1m of future spending.

They also found an extra £200,000 from reserves to add on to a previously approved £500,000 pothole busting fund after the worst cold snap in 30 years.

Millions have been set aside to help fund a revamp of city secondary schools, to prepare for the privatisation of the council’s highways division, and replace two-thirds of the city’s streetlights.

Tories also banked savings from an announcement they want DC Leisure to run leisure facilities in the city, while planning to offload St Mary’s leisure centre from the council’s books.

But the recession has led to a £2.2m drop in income and pushed up demand for services.

It means the council is having to spend an extra £1.5m hiring more social workers following a surge in demand. More in-house foster carers will also be recruited.

And as previously reported a scheme to use convicts to help clean parks and streets will be rolled out further.

The closure of the Whitehaven and Birch Lawn care homes, after residents lost a legal battle against their eviction, will deliver the biggest job cuts, some 31.

Elsewhere rat-catchers, community workers, cleaners, environmental health and tourism posts will be axed and some training budgets will be slashed.

Controversial hikes in cremation and burial fees of up to 22 per cent, dubbed a “tax on the dead”, will be brought in. The council claims they are needed to pay for new environmentally friendly cremators.

Councillors’ allow-ances will be frozen despite protests from Labour who did not want to tinker with a link to minimum wage. But staff travel allowances will be cut to 40p a mile.

Millbrook library will close as part of a regeneration project for the area, despite a Lib Dem petition of more than 600 names. Mobile libraries will be provided instead.

At other libraries Tories will replace librarians with volunteers, hike charges for renting DVDs and introduce vending machines to bring in more cash.

Labour accused Tories bringing in a “Ryanair” approach with “swingeing” increases in prices and handouts for “for those that might vote Tory”.

They offered alternatives “for all the people all of the time.”

Lib Dems largely agreed with Tory spending plans, except targeted council tax discounts.