GREEN councillors will try and overhaul £2 million of proposed cuts at tomorrow’s budget including retaining all current funding for youth services.

The four amendments include plans to reverse cuts to the early help service, pay for a scheme housing homeless people in council buildings and fund the Stanmer Park restoration, ending the need for the sale of two downland sites.

The Green amendments would be paid for in part by raising fees for those “who can afford to pay more” for planning and highway services.

Green convenor Phelim MacCafferty said Labour was proposing “short-sighted cuts”and called for all parties to work together to save preventative services.

The Green group has criticised the administration for ignoring the advice from its fairness commission to invest in early intervention and save the council money in the long-run.

The amendments include overturning proposed cuts of £370,000 to the council’s charity partners and £645,000 for community youth work.

New funding has also been identified to prevent cuts of £45,000 to the community safety team and £170,000 to supported bus routes.

It is also proposed to spend an additional £200,000 on contract management which the Greens believe could save millions from the £220 million the authority spends on external contracts.

The group points to the huge losses the council incurred with the collapse of parking fee collection firm Coin Co International in 2015.

Increasing fees for land charge searches for property buyers, licences for skips, scaffolding and hoardings and fees for building control inspections will raise an additional £526,000.

The amendments also propose using a £1 million underspend in the council’s investment in digital services to help protect services.

Cllr MacCafferty said his group could not rescue the budget but “merely tweak it”.

He added: “We want to prevent an undue amount of pain because of the cuts.

“We believe not all the cuts have to be made. There are ways to raise income the administration has not considered.

“There are rabbit holes they haven’t looked down.

“We are raising income from those who can afford it to protect the most vulnerable, the people most hurt by the budget.

“The administration has pushed back against our proposals and council officers are not that fond of some of the proposals because they represent risk but in order to protect vulnerable people there are risks we should be prepared to take.”

Cllr MacCafferty said persisting with cuts to youth services, despite such strong public opposition, would have a hugely negative impact on young people in the city.

He said: “Some of the harshest cuts are hurting the people who don’t really have a voice.

“If no one will stand up for them I don’t really know what it says about the future for them in the city.”

Brighton and Hove City Council’s budget meeting will be held at Hove Town Hall from 4.30pm tomorrow.

If a decision is not reached on the night, councillors may have to come back the following week as they did in 2015.