OPPOSITION councillors have labelled Brighton and Hove City Council’s proposed £25 million budget cuts as “too timid” for the required radical reform of public services.

Conservative group leader Geoffrey Theobald questioned whether the Labour administration had “left no stone unturned” in their pursuit of value for money for taxpayers.

Cllr Theobald also accused the Labour group of “exaggerating” the council’s poverty.

He claimed proposals allowing local authorities to keep all the business rates they collect by 2020 will be hugely beneficial for Brighton and Hove.

Council leader Warren Morgan unveiled his administration’s proposals this week, describing them as an interim between previous "salami slicing budgets" and a more radical reform he has promised in the next three years.

Brighton and Hove City Council needs to make £68 million of cuts by 2020 with 540 council jobs set to go in the process.

Chancellor George Osborne claimed in Wednesday’s spending review that local authorities would be no worse off financially in five years time.

Business rates reform and new powers to retain all proceeds from council property sales would balance out the removal of the local government grant, Mr Osborne told MPs.

Cllr Theobald described the council’s waste removal team Cityclean as “immune to reform” after the release of budget proposals this week.

The department will have to make £450,000 through staff cuts but the Conservatives had proposed turning it into a John Lewis style mutual.

Cllr Theobald said: “While I welcome the fact that Labour are now finally starting to think about the radical reform of services that we have been talking about for so long, I do think that they are being too timid – I question whether their hearts are really in this.

“I also think that the Labour administration has been guilty of exaggerating the council’s financial position in relation to funding reductions.

“Brighton and Hove will do very well from the re- localisation of business rates and should benefit considerably compared to our current position. “

Cllr Morgan said his administration's approach had been to reject the annual salami slicing to meet the cuts required by government and is looking across their four year term to deliver services in a different way.

He said: "It is perhaps an interim budget in the process.

"We still have to meet the £25 million cuts but we are doing it in the context of a four year budget plan."

He added that business rate reform may not come in until 2020, meaning the Government was still taking £50 million away from them each year and that all councils around the country were feeling the pain.

He said: "If Tory councils that have been cutting council tax year-on-year are now putting up council tax, you know things are bad."