Review or scrap cost cutting measures Telford & Wrekin Council told

Cuts to winter gritting programme and Creative Arts Service, which provides support to children and adults, should be reversed, according to a report by the council's finance and enterprise scrutiny committee.

Proposed reductions in opening hours at Telford Ice Rink and Telford Town Park Visitor Centre should be looked at again, while plans to cut funding for Age UK transport by £50,000 should be put on hold, according to the committee.

The potential scaling back of the cuts has been made possible because of a higher council tax increase than initially assumed by the council, according to authority chiefs. It comes after people living in the borough supported a council tax rise of either 3.2 per cent or 3.9 per cent – well above the Government's assumed figure of two per cent.

The recommendations will be discussed at a meeting of the council's cabinet on Thursday.

Further proposals in the report include educing a proposed saving at Newport Library by £65,000 to ensure a council First Point service continues to run at the venue along with a self service library. The authority announced earlier this week that it no longer planned to close the library, which was one of six under threat as part of budget cuts.

An extra £200,000 should also be spent on children's safeguarding to reflect increasing demands on the service, according to the report.

The authority had initially planned to cut £67,570 from the funding it provides for the Creative Arts Service.

Councillor Shirley Reynolds, chairman of the committee, said: "We appreciate that this is the council's most difficult budget ever and that frontline services are being affected like never before.

"However, there were certain proposals that we felt could be looked at again.

"In some instances, the resultant saving was not worth the impact on the community and in other instances we felt the savings could be delivered differently."

Councillor Lee Carter, Telford & Wrekin Council's cabinet member for finance and service delivery, said: "The council has been actively working with partner organisations to try and find solutions to minimise the impact wherever possible.

"We have already announced that Hadley, Dawley and Newport libraries will be delivered in a different way which will still enable savings to be made.

"The list of key changes to the original budget proposals demonstrates that we have held a meaningful consultation and we have listened to what both our scrutiny committee and local residents have said.

"As a result, we have changed some of our plans as far as we are able to in the light of yet another damaging cut to the grant that we receive from Government."