COUNTY council bosses have no choice but to go ahead with the "necessary" planned increase in council tax next year because it is being let down by government cuts, opposition councillors have said in reaction to draft budget proposals.

Councillor Simon Geraghty, leader of Worcestershire County Council, announced plans to increase its share of council tax by 3.99 per cent next year with two per cent ring-fenced for adult social care.

If approved, it would be the seventh year in a row it has increased - having gone up by almost four per cent last year and 4.94 per cent the year before.

Opposition councillors have said raising council tax is the only way it can pay for caring for the county’s most vulnerable due to government cuts.

Green councillor John Raine, who represents Malvern Trinity, said raising the council tax by the same amount it had done for the two years previously was "necessary."

He said: "It is necessary. We have been making cuts and cuts for the last seven, eight, even ten years now and that is because of a loss of government grants and funding.

"That is what really is the cause of this."

Despite saying council tax rises were necessary, Cllr Raine said he was concerned how much of the budget and cuts were being worked out in-year. He said this meant "intentions were not always being fulfilled" and the full account of the cuts was not being given.

He said: "I am concerned that there is a lot of detail still to be worked out. The county council is putting itself in a corner.

"We talk about the low-hanging fruit but that has long been picked.

"It's a managed process but it is not an ideal way of delivering the budget.

Labour councillor Paul Denham, who represents Rainbow Hill in Worcester, said the council had no other choice but to raise council tax because it needed to pay for the rising cost of social care.

Cllr Denham said: “We do need to find considerably more money for social care, particularly adult social care, however it is because of the government’s lack of funding for this area of council activity.

“It would be far better to raise the amount from people who are the wealthiest in society rather than everybody. The council has no choice because the council has no money coming from anywhere else.”

Cllr Denham said it was “really unfair” to place the burden on all council taxpayers in Worcestershire to pay for the funding gap caused by the rising cost of social care and said it should be down to income tax to pay for funding.

Green councillor Matthew Jenkins, who represents St Stephen, said the council needed to increase its share of council tax because the authority relied so much on central government funding which had been “cut and cut” for several years.

“Eventually it will get to the point where we have no funding from the government,” he said.

“It has to go up because we need to get the full amount, we need to get as much as we can.

“The Conservatives have pretty much ignored adult social care funding in its latest manifesto. They are just ignoring it and hoping it goes away.

“It is something that we [Green and Lib Dem councillors] have been pushing for many years.

“We need to raise council tax to pay for the care. Council leaders have previously not been going for the full amount and they really needed to. Council tax is the only thing we have.”