THE Conservative administration has defended their budget for the coming financial year ahead of what is set to be a heated meeting of the full council on Thursday.

Unprecedented financial challenges have left Swindon Borough Council searching for savings across almost all departments.

Officers and councillors have to find savings of almost £50m between now and 2020 - all at a time when the cost of providing social care to vulnerable adults and children is rocketing and funding from central government is reducing fast.

The challenge has so far been anything but smooth - the council expects to end this financial year having overspent by £6.5m. Social care costs make up £4.6m of that figure.

Controversial efforts to find savings have already hit libraries, children’s centres and disability transport while most frontline services have been offloaded to parish councils. In the coming year between 80 and 90 council jobs will be cut in an effort to save £1.5m.

These decisions have been met with fierce opposition from campaigners. Their concerns have been echoed by the Labour group which has set out its intention to oppose the budget on Thursday.

But Russell Holland, the Cabinet Member for Finance, has hit out at Labour for what he argues is a failure to bring alternative proposals to the table.

Coun Holland said: “The Conservative administration is committed to providing sustainable services for the people of Swindon now and in the long-term. We are ready and able to make the decisions necessary to achieve this.

“Most important of all, we are making our budget proposals in the open where they can be scrutinised by the public.”

He argued that despite draft budget proposals being available since late 2016, no one had seen any alternatives from Labour.

“If Labour is really serious about its proposal it needs to stop hiding behind its press releases and submit its alternatives in good time,” he added.

“The choice is clear: either we have a Conservative administration that will make difficult but necessary decisions for the long-term of the town or Labour who only seek short-term headlines.”

The leader of the Labour group, Coun Jim Grant, said: “We will be setting out our response to the Conservative group’s budget on Thursday but I can confirm we will be opposing their budget based on what they have proposed so far.

“It is becoming clear to more and more people that this Conservative budget will make people pay a lot more and get a lot less and we will not support such an approach.

“What is particularly disappointing for us is that we would like to use the budget to give people a referendum on the new parish councils, however now they are fully installed such a referendum would be meaningless.”