COUNCIL tax bills will rise by three per cent and 35 jobs will be lost as part of plans to plug a £9 million hole in Fife Council's budget.

The education service was largely protected but £1.4m of cuts were still voted through with primary class sizes set to rise, the teacher supply budget reduced and a review of management structures in high schools shaving off £500,000.

At the same meeting in Fife House today, councillors also approved a capital plan that allocated more than £117m for the replacement of Inverkeithing, St Columba's and Woodmill high schools and more than £90m for new primary schools in Fife.

And they agreed to increase rents for council tenants by 3.2 per cent.

Councillors met in Glenrothes to agree the general fund revenue budget, which outlined the joint administration's proposals.

As well as raising council tax – they decided against raising it by the allowed 4.79 per cent and Band D properties will now pay £1221 a year – they'll make £4.8m of cuts which gives them "a small amount of headroom" to invest £1.15m.

That includes £400,000 for "holiday hunger", a year-long trial of free lunch provision in 24 schools during the school holidays for some of Fife's "less affluent communities", and £300,000 for the maintenance of cemeteries.

Each of the seven area committees will receive £50,000 for anti-poverty work and Sunday parking charges could be on the way out with area committees given control over local parking – £100,000 has been allocated to help with the "process of decentralisation".

There's also up to £60,000 a year for three years for Fife Gingerbread, which is facing a funding crisis, and temporary investments have now been made permanent, such as the quid a kid and free summer swims schemes, expansion of breakfast clubs, a drug rehabilitation programme and additional funding for looked after children and young carers.

The administration decided against introducing a tourist tax or workplace parking levy and also rejected cuts to music tuition, pupil support assistant posts, breakfast clubs and support for children and families through the voluntary sector.

The Scottish Government provided additional funding of £11m for health and social care, with the option for the council of keeping £3m of it to offset cuts to their own grant.

Instead, they agreed to hand over all of it to the Integrated Joint Board of the Health and Social Care Partnership, minus £837,000 which was the proportionate cut in funding received by the council.

The Conservatives put forward an amendment to the budget but the council co-leader David Ross asked if it was competent, stating: "It's simply a commentary and makes no changes to our budget proposals."

Chief executive Steve Grimmond said that while the amendment did not propose any changes, it did ask the council to "consider an approach to outsourcing" and there were no grounds to exclude.

And whilst the arguments and debates continued on all sides, at the end an incredulous co-leader David Alexander stated: "We've spent two and a half hours talking about a budget that everyone agrees with!"

The administration's motion on the budget received 48 votes and was passed.

The Tories amendment received 13 votes and fell.

The Lib Dem councillors did not submit an alternative budget and abstained from the vote.

Of the 35 jobs that are estimated to be lost as a result of the budget decisions, the administration said there will be no compulsory redundancies and the reduction would be managed through early retirement and voluntary severance.

Co-leader David Alexander said it could have been worse, they were initially expecting to face a budget gap of over £15m, but there will still be pain ahead with a warning of an estimated "budget gap of over £20m to address for 2020-21".

There are also a number of savings agreed in previous budgets which will kick in over the coming year which amount to savings and cuts of over £9.3m and the loss of 78 jobs.