FLINTSHIRE residents face an 8.5 per cent rise in Council Tax after the Welsh Government rubber-stamped a tough Local Government settlement.

Flintshire Council was hoping for a cash windfall to address a funding shortfall of £3.1 million for 2019/20 with the local authority’s leaders calling on the Senedd to hand it an extra £2m to keep Council Tax bills down to around 6 per cent.

Before Christmas they feared they would have to increase Council Tax by over 9 per cent, but additional funding from Cardiff arrived including a £949,000 share of a £14.2m Welsh councils’ pot for Welsh councils and an extra £1.410m for social care provision.

The only alternative would be to make further cuts in services, but the council’s chief executive Colin Everett has warned that could expose residents to risks.

Flintshire Council leader Aaron Shotton said: “We (the Welsh councils) made a clear call at this late stage for another £30m to £33m for schools across Wales and that would mean Flintshire would be due a £1.5m share.

“If we had had that it would minimise the rise and take us down to 6 per cent which is the average rise for Welsh councils.”

Flintshire’s financial squeeze has been compounded by a funding formula which dictates the Welsh Government settlement is weighted towards councils with higher deprivation levels and those in urban areas.

The authority is as low as 19th out of the 22 Welsh councils in terms of the amount of funding per head of population it receives.

Despite the “unfair” formula the Mr Everett says it did not consider asking for a review of the funding system this year. But the council chief says there are no “significant” cuts that can be made without having an impact on service users.

“We’re talking about funding people in social care so we meet their eligible needs and whether he have enough environmental health officers to protect food hygiene,” he said.

Cllr Shotton added: “We held a meeting with our local AMs and MPs last week and told them the only options on the table following a series of county council meetings.

“That is that there are no other efficiencies that are available to us.

“But if we couldn’t close the £3.1m gap the only option would be an 8.5 per cent rise in council tax.”

The proposal will go before councillors at a meeting of the cabinet committee on Tuesday, January 22.