CONSERVATIVES want senior councillors to take a pay cut to help save youth services.

The Tory amendments to the 2017/18 Brighton and Hove City Council budget propose reducing the £700,000 youth cuts by a further £190,000 while also creating a new £250,000 youth services fund for council house families.

The Conservative group will ask for reductions in special allowances for senior councillor roles to help cover the costs.

The group says its six amendments, totalling £765,000, would save the city’s highly valued youth service by “substantially reducing” Labour’s proposed cut, increase funding for short respite breaks for families with disabled children, and reduce cuts to the city’s “vitally important community and voluntary sector”.

There are also plans to increase spending on street tree planting and maintenance and to invest in new playground equipment in the Labour heartland of Mile Oak Park.

The group hopes to fund the proposals by abolishing “Labour’s talking shop” of the neighbourhoods, communities and equality committee, scrapping the “poverty proofing the school day” scheme agreed in December, removing low emission discounts on parking permits for diesel cars and making further cuts to the council’s communications budget.

Conservative finance spokesman, Andrew Wealls, said his group hoped to mitigate some “damaging proposals” from a chaotic budget process characterised by a “lack of strategic thinking”.

Conservative leader Geoffrey Theobald said: “Warren Morgan never tires of saying that he has no choice but to end the youth service because of cuts in Government funding, yet we have managed to find the funding to save it.

“Young people in the city who use this service will therefore be wondering why on earth they have been forced by Labour to go through months of uncertainty and distress.”