COUNCIL tax may be frozen for 2010/11 but opposition councillors are right to be sceptical about how the Conservatives might find another £15.9million in savings next year and a further £13.8m the year after that.

It is a balanced budget yet there are only so many so-called 'efficiency savings' that can be made before cuts in staff, the computerisation of records and a little bit of creative accounting has a noticeable effect on the quality of services. Labour and the Liberal Democrats would argue it has already started.

While chipping away at costs year-on-year helps to reduce spending by a small amount - just look at the many examples in this year's budget - and does not appear as politically drastic or as dramatic as slashing entire projects or services, cumulatively they can be just damaging by eroding the day-to-day standards and the ability of the authority to complete routine or statutory jobs correctly and on time.

Shaving thousands of pounds here and there is clearly not going to help fill the predicted £30m-plus black hole for the two years from April 2011 so the Tory administration, which is confident it will emerge from May's local elections with an even larger majority, ought to be upfront about the frank choices it is going to have to make and which of its residents and our readers will bear the brunt. Library visitors? Schoolchildren? Leisure centre users? Motorists? Leaseholders? Or all of the above?