A COUNCIL tax freeze is on the cards for hard-pressed Worcester households next year - followed by the prospect of hikes of nearly two per cent every year to 2020.

The proposals, which have emerged in a revised Worcester City Council blueprint today, have been put forward as a way of coping with enormous budget cuts.

The new Conservative leadership, which wrestled control back from Labour in June, made a manifesto pledge to freeze rates in April next year.

The cabinet is meeting next week and a new report on the forthcoming budget has now officially confirmed that intention for the first time.

But the revised blueprint, known as the Medium Term Financial Plan (MTFP), calls for rises of 1.9 per cent, the maximum legally-allowed rise without a referendum, every year from 2016 to 2020.

Under old plans from the previous Labour administration, city council rates were expected to rise every year.

Councillor Simon Geraghty, the leader, said: "We are committed to balancing the books and to providing value for money for taxpayers, while continuing to deliver the vital services that we know our residents value and depend on."

The freeze will go to a vote at full council next February as part of the 2015/16 budget setting process.

Foregoing a council tax rise in 2015 will cost the council's coffers around £100,000 'lost' income - rising to £500,000 within five years.

Labour argues that because the city council only takes 11 per cent of the bill, a rise of two per cent would cost households less than £4 a year on average.

Councillor Richard Boorn, Labour's finance spokesman, said: "The council is having to make so many sacrifices due to Conservative vanity, not what is best economically.

"It's a short-term plan to get them through the elections, nothing else."

As well as savage cuts in central Government funding, the council says it is battling inflation pressures of £500,000 a year and is factoring in pay rises of two per cent each year from 2016 onwards.

Funding from the Government is already down 16 per cent this year, and from 2011 to 2016 will have been slashed in half, which led to last year's revelation that around £4 million will need to be saved by 2019.

Worcestershire County Council, which controls 72 per cent of the bill, has not yet decided what to do with its portion of the charge next year.