WEST Somerset Council – facing a triple blow to its funding – decided at its budget meeting on Wednesday to increase Band D Council Tax by £5 a year and use £581,000 of its reserves to prop up the delivery of essential services.

But councillors were told that, while the authority will balance its books in 2017-18, the following year presented a serious challenge with a forecast budget gap of more than £800,000.

Deputy leader Cllr Mandy Chilcott said that the council, the smallest in England with an overall budget of £4 million, was set to have its 2017-18 general government funding reduced by 36 per cent to £274,000.

New Home Bonus funding has reduced by £171,000 from £716,000 to £545,000 and retained business rates would be cut from £1,421,000 to £1,039,000.

Cllr Chilcott said that Council Tax on a Band D property would increase to £152.32 per year for West Somerset Council’s proportion of the bill – £150.56 for council services and £1.76 to contribute to flood protection works delivered by the Somerset Rivers Authority.

This meant the average Band D Council Tax payer received all West Somerset Council’s services for £2.92 per week.

Cllr Chilcott said: “We are already starting work to ensure we consider all our options for closing the deficit gap in 2018-19. This is a huge task and councillors will face some very difficult decisions.

“We will do everything in our power to protect services in these extremely difficult circumstances and will continue to lobby for a fairer share of funding for rural areas.”

Cllr Anthony Trollope-Bellew, leader of the council, said: “The challenges West Somerset Council faces are well documented. This coming year we are facing substantial reductions in our core funding while the year after that looks extremely difficult.

“Thanks to our partnership with Taunton Deane Borough Council we have achieved significant savings in the past but we need to do more.

“Our priority is – and always has been – to make sure that local people continue to receive the services they value. That is why we are proposing a new, single council covering Taunton Deane and West Somerset.

“West Somerset is simply too small in terms of population, in a very large geographical area to remain viable. The financial facts speak for themselves.

“In the future, a new council covering Taunton Deane and West Somerset is the best hope of continuing to delivering an acceptable level of services in these times of reduced Central Government funding.”