FAMILIES and pensioners last night claimed they were getting fewer services for more money after learning of Oxford City Council's four per cent tax increase.

Householders have already been hit hard in recent months by rising food and fuel prices and soaring power bills.

Colin Straughan, 36, who lives with his partner Jackie Floyd and their children in Aldrich Road, Cutteslowe, said: "You are just getting less and you are paying more.

"They are cutting everything. Everywhere you go it seems it is cuts and cuts.

"The money is going somewhere, but it certainly is not going to the community.

"You cannot help but think you are getting less value for money."

Mr Straughan, a paint sprayer, pays about £130 a month in council tax.

He added: "The power bills and the fuel bills have been crippling. This just means I have got to find that bit extra.

"The budget is looming too. I remember the last budget - it sounded alright, but I have never been so badly off."

Oxford City Council levies one of the highest district council taxes in the country.

Bill Jupp, 76, a spokesman for Oxford Pensioners' Action Group, said: "The increase hits us hard and it comes on top of all the other bills we have to pay.

"I don't want to see services cut, because they're bad enough already, but at the same time I don't want to see the increases coming our way, because we just cannot sustain them."

The budget at a glance

FEWER homeless people will be placed in bed and breakfast accommodation and there will be cuts in the use of temporary accommodation.

Those who fail to keep pre-booked appointments for use of services like housing officers and rat catchers will be fined £25. The council says a "significant amount of officer time was lost" by people who stood them up and estimated it could raise £10,000 a year by fining no-showers.

SEX shop proprietors are to be hit in the pocket through a £1,250 rise in their annual licence fees.

Legal street traders setting up stalls in and around Cornmarket Street will pay £6,105 a year for their licences - up from the current £4,140 - in order to fund surveillance of and prosecution of illegal pedlars whose activities have caused problems in the city centre and led to joint council and police crackdowns to drive them away.

UNIFORMED street wardens will be spread more thinly across Oxford's estates as the city council keeps its staffing complement at 15, rather than 17, in order to save £150,000 over the next three years.

The number of Police Community Support Officers deployed across the city to back up regular police patrols will stay at 54 and not increase to 60, as was originally planned under a joint agreement drawn up by the council with Thames Valley Police.

ALL city council-run car parks - including the Westgate Centre, Oxpens, Gloucester Green and Worcester Street - will see their standard charges increase by four per cent from April, which should generate an estimated £100,000 in extra income for the authority over three years. Fees at the Barns Road car park will be brought into line with the rest of the city and there will be mid-year, inflation-linked fee increases at all council car parks.

A ONE-OFF additional fighting fund of £50,000 is to be made available so that mobile flood prevention equipment like so-called Dutch Sausages - or inflatable flood barriers - can be purchased in the next few months and be available for deployment at short notice as soon as flood warnings are issued.

This flood defence method was brought to the attention of the council by Osney Island Residents' Association.

PEOPLE wanting to use public conveniences in the city are to be charged to spend a penny.

The fees, which have yet to be finalised, have been put on hold for the coming financial year but will come into effect in 2009-10, and are expected to bring in about £100,000 a year.

It is unclear whether the city council plans to charge people wanting to use the Town Hall's toilets, which are classed as public conveniences.

THE duties of Oxford's street cleaning teams are to be cut back in a bid to save £70,000 a year, but the council said that the public should not notice a change in the "perception of cleanliness across the city".

Tougher enforcement action against people who commit environmental crimes will generate extra money, while privatising the city's Christmas decorations should save the council £41,000 a year.

SOME of the most controversial service cuts in the budget include slashing the number of hanging baskets put out across the city, reducing the watering of plants in public parks and a reduction in the maintenance of the nursery at Cutteslowe Park.

However, the council has committed itself to spending an extra £20,000 in this area in 2008-9, to go towards a tree-planting programme, although the details of this are yet to be decided.

ALL fees at city council-run leisure centres will be increased by five per cent across-the-board - and rounded up to the nearest 10p - from April.

The Peers Sports Centre, in Littlemore, which faces closure, will be kept open until at least August, after Labour and Greens voted to provide enough money to keep it running, despite Liberal Democrat opposition.

Barton swimming pool is to have a fitness suite.

THE cost of being buried in city council-run cemeteries will rise by 20 per cent from April, a move which should generate an extra £130,000 for the Town Hall coffers over three years.

Councillors have also agreed to provide a weekend burial service, which will allow people the chance to bury loved ones at weekends and on public holidays, in response to requests from the Muslim community, members of which are traditionally buried within 24 hours.

THE council has given more details of trial weekly food-waste collections in the city.

The year-long pilot project is expected to begin in April and will see about 800 tonnes of food scraps sent for specialist composting instead of being tipped in landfill sites.

The trial will involve more than 6,000 households and test two different methods of waste collection. Half of the participants will be given seven-litre kitchen caddies and a 21-litre kerbside container while the others will just be given the large kerbside container.

If successful, the scheme will be extended throughout the city from April next year.

The trial is expected to cost about £198,000, with £65,000 coming from the Oxfordshire Waste Partnership.