RULING Southampton Tories are pushing ahead with a controversial blueprint to slash costs by a quarter and “privatise” more services to tackle the city’s worst ever budget squeeze.

City leader Cllr Royston Smith told a full council meeting that the plans were vital to safeguard services.

The “change programme” would transform the authority into a “primarily commissioning council” as £50m is cut from its running costs over the next three years Waste collections, street cleaning and park keeping could be put out to tender to be run by private firms and more services will be shared with other councils if money could be saved.

It comes as bin men, street cleaners and other staff taking industrial action over imposed pay cuts decide whether to accept a proposal end the six-month dispute.

Opposition councillors rounded on the Conservative cost cutting plan, which Labour claimed was as the most important policy document to “come before the council for a decade”, as an ideologically driven attempt to privatise the council.

But Liberal Democrat leader Adrian Vinson said he detected an “ideological undercurrent” in the policy plans.

Labour councillor Andrew Pope said soft language like “social enterprises” hid the true intention to privatise services.

He said: “It is a smoke screen to mask the reality.”

However, Cllr Smith said: “This is not political ideology or dogma. It is driven by necessity. We have a financial crisis and a global crisis which we cannot deny or avoid.

“We only have to look at countries who are not handling their situation to see what will happen.”

The policy will be get final approval from Tory council leaders on Monday.