DORSET County Council looks set to increase its share of the council tax by almost four per cent and will still have to make the same cuts to budgets, despite a fairer funding settlement.

If full council approves the budget next week, there will be a 1.99 per cent increase to DCC’s council tax and an increase of two per cent to the separate social care precept section of the council tax. This two per cent must be used for adult social care.

Leader of the council Cllr Robert Gould said the council had ‘no choice’ but to take advantage of the extra funding this would provide.

The social care precept section of the council tax will be individually marked on bills people receive.

In 2015/16 DCC charged a Band C property £1,080.24 for its services and a Band D £1,215.27.

The council had initially identified savings of £13 million for 2016/17 and due to the grant from central government being slashed it was facing additional savings of £7.4m.

However, extensive lobbying led to a £4.1 million boost for Dorset in 2016/17 meaning that the additional savings now stand at £3.3 million.

Cllr Gould said that this does not mean there is an additional £4.1m now for the coming year.

The budget was recommended to full council at Thursday’s meeting of the cabinet where Cllr Gould said that savings identified will remain to maintain reserves.

Speaking at the meeting, he said: “There has been improvements in our situation which is significant in terms of going forward.

“We still need to make savings on top of those we noted in December. It’s still challenging. We are of course very pleased that there has been a reduction in the changes.”

Ways identified of making savings include scrapping members’ divisional budgets,where members have £1,000 to use in their wards and were initially part of the base budget, but will now not be included.

The budget report to the council states that while the position sees them £4.1 million better off than expected, all this simply means is that it will need to use £2.2 million of one-off funding from reserves to achieve a balanced, legal budget rather than £6.3 million.

Leader of the Lib Dems on the council Cllr Janet Dover, said it was ‘not a happy budget’ and called for more detail on areas being affected, including cuts to rural buses.

The budget will be agreed by DCC’s full council on Monday.