COUNCIL tax in Carmarthenshire could rise by up to four per cent per year over the next three years to help balance the books.

Finance chiefs have crunched the numbers and believe the authority will need to make savings of £33 million from 2019/20 to 2021/22.

This comes on top of nearly £80 million of cuts — or a quarter of the council’s annual net budget — over the past eight years.

Speaking at an executive board meeting, councillor David Jenkins said much uncertainty remained about the coming months and years.

These included higher wage costs and the demands of an ageing population.

A report before the executive board said the authority should plan to make £11. 4 million savings in 2019/20, £11.2 million in 2020/21, and a further £10.2 million in 2021/22, based on an anticipated cut in central Government funding.

The report said that UK Government borrowing had dropped last year while public sector wages were rising.

Wales could have a £1.2 billion boost as a consequence of Prime Minister Theresa May’s pledge to pump an extra £20 billion into the NHS in England by 2023.

On the negative side, the report said major uncertainty remained over the UK’s trading relationship with the European Union post-Brexit and its impact on tax revenues.

There was also a lack of clarity over the tens of millions of pounds EU grants which currently benefit Carmarthenshire and the wider region.

And the report said the council would need to finance its share of Swansea Bay City Region city deal schemes once business cases for the projects had been signed off.

The financial modelling for the three-year period is based on council tax rises of 3.7% and 3.6% for the first two years and then an assumption of a 4% hike in 2021/22.Schools in the county, said the report, would need to absorb a proportion of the proposed cuts as well as other departments.

Councillor Jenkins said more details on savings proposals would be provided in due course.

“Given the scale and the seriousness of the challenge ahead of us, we should leave no stone unturned.”