COUNCIL tax looks set to rise by 4.95 per cent in Monmouthshire after councillors passed their budget for 2015/16 today.

A package of policies which seeks to continue reductions of more than £20 million in their budget over the next three years were adopted as a whole by members.

The authority’s leader Cllr Peter Fox said the council was keen to keep services running in the face of further cuts, with others expected in the future.

He said: “We want do not want to turn services off because when they’ve gone, they’ve gone forever. But as the mandates describe you might need to do that in a different way.

“We accept these are difficult decisions and this budget is thoughtful and has had a huge amount of input.

“It is the best budget we could come with with all the pressures we are facing.”

The final council tax rate will be settled at a council meeting next February but if adopted as expected, it will mean an increase of £51.65 for an average Band D property from a charge of £1,043.34 this year.

The council’s cabinet member for finance, Cllr Phil Murphy, said a budget cut of 4.3 per cent on their grant from the Welsh Government for 2015/16 was “considerably more savage” than the authority had anticipated. He said the meeting was held this month, rather than next month as is normally the case, to action savings as soon as possible.

As part of the package, school budgets will be frozen for next year, saving £1.124 million.

Opposition councillors offered amendments but all were defeated.

The Labour group, led by Cllr Dimitri Batrouni, made three suggestions, which would have been financed by other savings across the council. They were that street lights currently turned off in Monmouthshire residential areas from midnight until 5am would be switched back on, at a cost of £85,000; that cuts to the council’s additional learning needs (ALN) provision would be stopped, at a cost of £120,000; and that £500,000 would be reallocated to schools’ budgets across the county.

Another made by the independent group leader Cllr Simon Howarth to increase council tax to 5.95 per cent to provide around £400,000 for special education needs (SEN) and post-16 schools’ transport was also unsuccessful.

It was backed by fellow independent councillor Debby Blakebrough who said she was “pleading” with the council not to increase the charges for children using higher education.