Inverclyde Council officers and a cross-party group of councillors have come up with a list of money-saving ideas to help trim £833,000 from the local authority budget over the next two years The cuts are being looked at to balance the books.

Thirteen proposals have been tabled, which include increasing daily parking charges to £2, a 10 per cent rise in cremation costs, a two per cent hike in burial fees and a £2.35 a week charge for community alarms for the elderly.

The shortlist also suggests axing free swimming and a three per cent increase in council tax, which alone would generate £750k.

Local authority chiefs will dip into financial reserves to the tune of £2m to offset the impact of any cuts and to protect jobs and frontline services.

But a further £833k of savings must be made from the list of 13 proposals, which are worth just over £2m in total.

The plans have been drawn up by officials and councillors on the cross-party members budget working group (MBWG) during regular meetings over the last year. They will be put to the council’s policy and resources committee tomorrow.

Councillor McCabe, who chairs the committee and the working group, said: “We are giving people a choice whereby they can decide to take some rather than all of the proposed savings.

“The target is just over £800,000. That’s come down along way and is assuming we will use £2m of reserves.

“If we weren’t going to do that, it would be £2.8m of savings.

“The savings options are mainly about raising extra money or cutting back on things like free swimming or pitch hire.

“Not too many are necessarily going to impact on jobs.

“But the big one at the end — the three per cent council tax rise — would raise £700k and the budget gap is £800k so that could more or less close the budget gap.

“It’s choices — increase the council tax or put up burial and cremation charges, increase it or put up the community charge, increase it or cut free swimming.

“It’s these hard choices which are being put up for consultation “Councillors will ultimately make the calls, but we want to get the public’s views.” An increase in parking charges would bring in around £70k, a hike in cremation and burial fees would generate £54k and the proposed £2.35 a week community alarm charge would bring in £203k.

Cutting free swimming would save £242k a year and there are four proposals to reduce school transport services which would save £280k while scrapping free pitch hire would claw back £111k. Councillors will tomorrow be asked to approve the package of savings subject to public consultation.

They are also being asked to rubber-stamp almost £1.7m worth of ‘efficiency’ and ‘adjustment’ savings over the next two years which will not go out to public consultation. These include scenarios where services are already being delivered under-budget or for less money. All proposals are aimed at avoiding job cuts.

Alan Puckrin, the council’s chief financial officer, said in his report: “The proposals have very limited impact on employees within the council and officers are confident that all can be managed via deletion of vacancies, release of temporary employees, turnover or voluntary early retiral.” Tomorrow’s meeting is open to the public and starts at 3pm in the council chambers.