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As a result, Monmouthshire will see its funding increase by 4.4 per cent which works out as an extra £6.15m but a report, for the cabinet, states “this increase does need to be taken in the context of the £16.8m of additional costs the council is managing through the budget process”.

To further reduce that, it is proposed increasing fees in charges, in line with inflation from last September, will bring in 800,000 while council services have identified £2.1m in savings.

The report states the remaining £7.7m can only be found through changes or cuts to services and increasing council tax.

The proposed 5.95 per cent hike would generate £5.4m but the cabinet won’t decide on the increase it will ask the full council to approve until after it has collected the responses to a public consultation on the draft budget, including the level of council tax rise.

A 5.95 per cent increase, before police and community council charges are added, would mean a band D home facing an annual bill of £1,926.45 which works out at an extra £2.08 a week or £108.19 a year.

Despite having identified a required £2.1m in savings and cuts, only £1.25m have so far been found which are from children’s care placements, which intends to make more use of the council’s in-house foster carers, and new provision based in Monmouthshire, and from consolidating under staffing in adult domiciliary care.

The draft budget still leaves £0.97m in savings or cuts that will have to be found by March in order to produce a legally required balanced budget.

The council’s budget position is also helped as latest figures show it is on course to end the current financial in balance.