A last-ditch effort to abandon a four per cent council tax increase in Ceredigion was snubbed by councillors who insisted the authority’s social services department needs that money.

Opposition Welsh Liberal Democrat leader Ceredig Davies had criticised the council’s Cabinet for recommending a four per cent council tax increase despite council leader Ellen ap Gwynn saying the funding settlement from the Welsh Government was much better than in previous years.

But despite Cllr Davies proposing a two per cent council tax increase, that was dismissed by councillors who voted to accept the above-inflation increase, just a year after a massive seven per cent increase.

Cllr Davies said: "This is the best settlement since 2007/8 and still today’s recommendation will entail Ceredigion’s households having to dig even deeper into their pockets to pay a council tax that many cannot afford and for services that many don’t enjoy.

"Last year the council agreed to a seven per cent council tax increase on the premise that two per cent of that was needed by education to cover the potential non-payment of teachers’ pay increase.

"That was hardly going to happen and in the event did not, and as a consequence Cabinet decided that the additional two per cent was reassigned to the social services budget.

"This year the council as part of its budget is asking to allocate a further £2.52m to social services, of which £1.35m is on a temporary basis.

"We’ve heard how good this settlement has been and as I said, we’re hitting the council tax payers of Ceredigion again hard."

Cllr Davies said the council should use money from its reserves of around £5.5m to fund the one-off £1.35m for social services, but finance lead officer Steve Johnson said that should not happen and that reserves should not be used to boost the standard budget, even though the payment is a one-off to help with transformation of services.

But Cllr Mark Strong said the additional money raised with the seven per cent increase last year was needed by the social services department, even though that hadn’t been the reason for imposing such a large increase.

He added: "If we hadn’t had that seven per cent last year, we would have had to cut social services and what he’d be saying now if we’d done that, and we’d cut every part of the social services he would be complaining.

"Some parts of social care are statutory and that would have hit some of the areas that are not statutory very hard.

"That would have hit the most vulnerable people in our society.

"That’s why I support the four per cent that is in front of us now."