Councillors have failed to make a recommendation on how much Conwy’s council tax should be raised by.

Members of the county’s finance committee were asked to look at options for balancing the cash strapped council’s books when they met recently.

However members could not agree when faced with an increase of 11.6 per cent which was the figure discussed in the past or having a smaller increase of 9.6 per cent.

The council’s finance director, Andrew Kirkham, told councillors they had a thankless task as the authority struggles with a £15,270,000 resource shortfall.

Mr Kirkham said: “You have got a thankless task as members to please everybody because you’ve got the same cash resources from the Welsh Government in 19/20 as you had in 18/19 but a shed load of additional pressures to deal with and there are only two ways you can deal with it. One is cuts, two is increasing the council tax.”

The meeting followed last months announcement of how much money the Welsh Government would be giving to councils.

There was bad news for Conwy with the council getting £154.192m, a like for like cut of 0.3% compared to last year according to Mr Kirkham.

Extra pressures over recent months have made the financial situation worse for the council, with pay agreements for staff and an increase in the cost of teacher’s pensions hitting Conwy.

Councillors were told that in terms of dealing with council tax they could approve an 11.6 per cent increase to fund the expected shortfall or they could use money that has been set aside for future works on schools to raise it by just 9.6 per cent.

Eirias county councillor, Dave Cowans, said: “We’re at the long end of a decision making process. We have to inform the electorate who is responsible because the perception created by the media in North Wales is it’s us.

"It is not plainly us. There is something obscenely wrong with the incremental destruction of local government by Westminster but we can’t do anything about that.

"What we can do is grapple with the situation before us and follow sensible advice and not touch balances."

Cllr Cowans proposed that the committee recommend an increase of 9.6 per cent.

But Cllr Nigel Smith argued that councillors hold firm on having a higher increase in order to protect council services.

He said: “I feel we’re not learning from the past, in the past we have set council tax at the bare minimum but at the end of the day we have only been penalising ourselves and our residents.

“Just to lighten the pressure on residents just to give them a good feeling is not doing them any favours for the future."

Neither proposal for council tax rises met with support from a majority of the committee.

The budget will next be discussed at cabinet.