ENVIRONMENT chiefs will face £2 million of cuts in their annual budget - double the amount they had planned for.

North Yorkshire County Council's environmental services scrutiny committee was due to hear today that the £2 million spending shortfall has to be accommodated.

The council already made a desperate attempt to find ways of cutting £1 million from last year's spending.

Proposals for saving the money include:

475,000 which could be taken from flood prevention spending

lWaste management and spending could lose £100,000

lSpending on traffic controls could shrink by £125,000

lFunding of road surfacing and highways strategy could be cut by £1 million.

Coun Bill Hoult, deputy leader of the county council's Liberal Democrats, said: "We will not be supporting the county council cuts.

"The council has consistently underspent by about £5 million for a number of years on highway maintenance and has been warned time and time again by Government that its grant would be reduced. It cannot cry wolf now. "Everybody can see the deteriorating state of our roads and knows that to spend less now is a false economy and just stores up worse problems for the future."

Coun Peter Sowray, the council's executive member for environmental services, said: "It does look like we will have to find £2 million of savings, but it hasn't been decided yet and we are hoping that we can reduce that figure.

"It is due to a pretty disastrous Government settlement, and to make that up we would have to raise council tax by 11.5 per cent. That is not something we are willing to do."

The council is currently consulting on a 9.5 per cent council tax increase.

Updated: 11:36 Wednesday, January 15, 2003