HOUSEHOLDERS in Kent will see their council tax bills rise by nearly five per cent this year after Kent County Council voted through an above-inflation increase.

Councillors formally approved the 4.95 per cent increase as part of the county council’s spending plans for the year at a budget meeting on Thursday.

It will push bills for homes in Band D – the average - up by about £45 to £964, a figure that excludes the amount charged by local district and borough councils, Kent Police and Kent Fire and parishes.

For many householders, bills are likely to top £1,000 for the first time.

County Hall’s Conservative leaders defended their £1.5billion budget, saying their spending plans had protected frontline services in the face of a Government spending squeeze.

The budget includes around £30million of savings.

But opposition parties accused the Conservatives of wasting money on unimportant activities and singled out a controversial plan for Kent TV, an internet-based broadband television service for criticism. That will cost taxpayers some £800,000.

And councillors attending the meeting at Maidstone’s County Hall faced a lobby by unions protesting at job cuts they said would hit services.

Around 190 jobs could be lost and already 77 library staff have been issued with letters telling them their jobs at risk.

Conservative council leader Paul Carter told the meeting KCC had been short changed by the Government. "If we had anything like a similar increase to Norfolk or Dorset [in government grants], I would be delivering a council tax increase well below the level of inflation. We have had a mountain to climb to save £30million."

He acknowledged there would be job losses in what he termed a "managed staff reduction" that would take advantage of natural turnover to try to avoid compulsory redundancies.

Despite this, he said KCC was committed to "further improvements in services we supply to our customers."

The opposition Labour party denounced the increase and put forward an alternative budget that would have seen bills increase by 3.6 per cent.

Labour leader Cllr Mike Eddy said their budget would safeguard key services for the vulnerable. He accused the Conservatives of "whingeing".

"The decrease of 5.3 per cent in government grants the Tories claim is based on fantasy figures that do not compare like with like. The Tory whingeing is like a spoilt teenager who gets £10 a week pocket money while his mates get £12," he said.

For the Liberal Democrats, leader Cllr Trudy Dean said the Conservative budget was based on "an incomplete and misleading picture of government funding".

She said KCC’s spending priorities were wrong. "We are choosing to provide money for projects which are not important to Kent people at the expense of services that are."