SOUTHAMPTON is facing its worst year of cuts yet, with 180 jobs set to be axed and dire warnings that the city is facing “financial meltdown”.

Cash-strapped council chiefs are grappling a £48 million black hole in the city’s finances and residents are set to see their council tax bills increase for the fourth year running.

Labour council chiefs are grappling with a £39 million shortfall and need to find another £9 million due to increasing pressures on children and adult’s social care.

New budget proposals revealed last night, including the job cuts, mean they still need to find another £12 million in savings for next year alone – and £71 million over the next four years.

Labour have described ongoing government cuts as “madness” and say dwindling grants and increasing demand for adult social care and other services have forced them into making cuts.

They predict that they will receive no funds at all from government to support their services by 2020.

But they have been attacked as “irresponsible” by their Conservative opponents, who say more should have been done at an earlier stage to prevent a future “crisis”.

The city has seen £71.4 million cutbacks in the past three years, with more than 550 jobs lost in the same period.

The council, which employs 3,566 people, not including those in schools, has already agreed £9.4 million of the cuts needed for this year.

The fresh cut proposals could see 183 jobs – of which 31 are already vacant – axed and council tax increase by 1.99 per cent for another year.

Many of the savings are being made through the council becoming more reliant on digital services, which is part of the ongoing transformation programme.

This means that instead of a person going through a council officer to renew their parking permit, for example, they will instead do it online themselves.

The council says provision is in place for elderly and vulnerable people who will be unable to do this themselves.

They are also reducing the number of top managers from 21 to 12, charging developers for the cost of new wheelie bins, cutting the park and open spaces teams and integrating the environmental health, trading standards and port health services teams.

Labour say their options to fill the remaining £12 million black hole include finding extra savings, getting more out of their ongoing transformation programme to change the way the council works and dipping into up to £7.5 million of reserves.

Council leader Simon Letts, pictured, heavily criticised ongoing government cuts, saying the council also faced in-year cuts to the public health budget which it has recently taken responsibility for, which he described as “madness”.

He said the council was being “corralled with a large whip” towards the cuts, adding that “it gets harder each year”.

Comparing the changes at the council to challenges faced by a cash-strapped city resident, he said that the council was “between the going to Lidl and using a foodbank” stage at the moment.

There are also plans to set up a “social enterprise fund” where current members of staff could bid for funding to start running some council services themselves.

His opposite number, Conservative opposition leader Jeremy Moulton said the council was in a “hell of a hole”, accused Labour of “sleepwalking off a cliff”.

Denying the Conservative government were to blame for the cuts, he said all public sector organisations had faced the same challenge due to “massive overspending” prior to 2010 and that Labour should have adopted their plans of sharing services at a much earlier stage.

He added: “They are not tackling the challenges the council is facing and I think it is going to be in financial meltdown unless some alternatives can be identified quickly. It is irresponsible and we are now facing a crisis.”

Keith Morrell, leader of the independent anti-cuts group, said: “There has been a woeful lack of information about just what they are proposing to do about this crisis. The level of job reductions is shocking.”

English Futures independent councillor Andrew Pope said: “There still isn’t anything in there to generate revenue apart from flogging off council land. There are no fresh ideas and because of that jobs will be lost and it’s a worrying picture.”

Consultation on the budget proposals will be launched on November 19 and run for 12 weeks before the council agrees its budget in February.