Tax set at seven times the rate of inflation

But it took four rounds of voting for Herefordshire Council to pass a 14.5 per cent rise.

And that was after the Tories offered a 12 per cent alternative - with savings found through measures such as scrapping the Local Area Forums, ditching glossy brochures and a freeze on recruitment. This fell at the first show of hands.

With two other options - 14.5 per cent and 17 per cent - also going down, the authority had to adjourn for 20 minutes of "corridor politics" at Hereford Shirehall before some kind of consensus could be reached.

The council came back to force the 14.5 per cent - or £924.89 as a Band D average - through by 29 votes to 19 with four abstentions.

Tories voted against the increase as a group.

There was unease among Independent members at committing about £1.5m of the council's cash reserves to curb any rise - as revealed last week.

Openly hinting at splits within cabinet over the increase, Independent group leader Don Rule said such an action was "risky" when so many potential demands on those reserves - such as firefighters' pay - were still unknown.

Council leader Terry James said reserves - currently topping £5.5m - were there to be used, "otherwise what's the point of having them."

The £1.5m, he said, kept a council tax increase to 14.5 per cent and also allowed for much-needed investment in social care (£300,000 to tackle bed blocking) and environment (£100,000 to break the backlog of road repairs).

The move does mean dropping reserves below a recommended £3m minimum - something the 2004/2005 budget will have to account for.

All sides roundly condemned central government for the "sleight of handout" that saw a face value increase in the council's 2003/2004 spending assessment become an £8m loss on closer inspection.