To achieve the necessary savings next year, council departments face making significant savings, with adult social services hardest hit – needing cuts of more the £2m, followed by children and young people’s services needing to make “efficiency savings” of £1.2m.

Together, all departments need to find savings totalling £5.6m next year to balance the books on the current figures.

Cllr Holbrook said difficult decisions had already been taken “which led us into the controversial measures such as the Strategic Asset Review”– which included the controversial decision to close libraries.

He said: “Over the next three years, from 2011, we will have to make savings which are a third again more than we have done so far. This is going to be really tough.”

But he said other parties would have to show “realism and responsibility” and “not make rash promises such as saying they will re-open anything closed down by the current administration”.

Conservative leader on Wirral Council, Jeff Green, said the projected budgets “make absolutely clear that the Labour Chancellor is intending to make real cuts in public services and funding”.

He said: “We need to look seriously at what the Chancellor’s budget means for Wirral Council and our services, and take all the steps necessary to protect frontline services such as schools, social services and libraries.”

But Cllr Foulkes said: “We would not have made the difficult decisions we have made if we did not know what the position would be.”

He said, without the tough choices made by Labour-Lib-Dem administration people in Wirral would be facing ever higher council tax bills over the coming years.

He said: “It’s a difficult job and it’s getting tougher by the year. We’re aiming to get to reasonable council tax and savings.”