Council tax increase is one of few ways to protect services

Government spending on local services has more than halved since 2009, according to the Financial Times.

Councils have been worst hit of all by government cuts, seeing their funding slashed by 55% in the last five years.

Other councils aren't coping as well as we have to date; many across the country have long closed essential services such as libraries and children's centres. Some are rumoured to be on the brink of financial collapse, squeezed between the coalition's axe and growing demand for services.

So far in Brighton and Hove, we've absorbed the reductions in funding with minor increases in council tax - and through finding new sources of income for frontline services and making genuine efficiencies like halving the number of buildings we use, and reducing the costs of senior management.

We've managed to bring in more than £64 million to the city from outside funding pots - a third of that for transport schemes - and have greened council buildings to cut energy bills.

This coming year, however, will be different. The government cuts are the biggest yet, and the city faces with some awful decisions about what local services can afford to run in the future.

A council tax rise is one of the very few ways in which we will be able to protect services now and into the future. Under our proposals for a referendum on a 5.9% council tax increase, the majority of the city's households would pay an additional £1.32 a week or less to safeguard services they value, and protect the city's most vulnerable from the worst of the government's cuts.

We utterly disagree with the Conservative-Labour-LibDem consensus that Brighton and Hove residents' services should be cut to pay for the bankers' economic crash. We call on the other parties to let residents decide on giving our services the lifeline they desperately need.