OPPOSITION councillors yesterday praised Conservatives for setting a budget without major service cuts.

Parties on West Oxfordshire District Council yesterday unanimously supported the Tory budget for the 12 months from April.

This will guarantee no redundancies and maintain grants for charities and voluntary groups and free parking at council car parks.

It comes two days after Labour-run Oxford City Council hiked charges and slashed front-line service budgets. Changes will include higher parking charges and cuts to the out-of-hours noise service.

Leader of the West Oxfordshire Lib Dem group, Richard Andrews, said: “I would like to be able to say this is a terrible budget, but I can’t.

“If we put forward a budget like that I think we would have been very pleased, we would have thought we would have done a good job.”

Councillor Simon Hoare, Tory cabinet member for resources, said: “This budget is not a budget of redundancies, of slash and burn, of knee-jerk reaction or of service cuts.

“It’s a budget the seeds of which have been sown over the last year with a proactive approach to efficiency savings and extracting the maximum bang for each council taxpayer’s buck.”

Yet he said future years were uncertain.

He said: “What is going to dictate our ability to spend is how much money we are able to save.”

The council will spend £9.9m – £633,000 less than this year.

It has had to dip into £262,000 from its £7.9m reserves to meet the shortfall after Government cash support fell from £6.1m to £5.3m.

In line with other English councils, its £81.63 part of the council tax will be frozen because of extra Government cash support. A band D bill will be £1,397.64, not including town and parish councils.

The capital grants budget, given to groups for building projects, will stay at £300,000.

While parking will remain free, taxis and private hire vehicle charges will increase by 3.5 per cent. And the council’s pension deficit is still about £9m.

Bosses said £2.5m had been saved by sharing office workers with Cotswold District Council, better buying habits and a cheaper contractor deal for household recycling.

Investment in commercial properties had brought in cash, it added.