AN alternative budget that could have avoided a council tax rise altogether was suppressed from public view.

The draft budget review put together by a group of backbench councillors has been leaked to the Courier.

An edited version of the document has now been made available, having removed references to proposed job cuts and criticisms of the ruling party.

Other suggestions were to scale back spending on CCTV and restructure the planning application service.

While the report does not go into specific details of which posts would be lost, several sections were removed for "legal reasons".

Cllr Brian Ransley, chairman of the working group, said: "It was never my intention not to draw attention to the serious losses incurred during the 2008/9 financial year that resulted in council reserves being depleted by £1.4m.

"However, we are confident that our leader and cabinet have taken our criticism on board."

Council leader Roy Bullock said: "In the current financial climate the council has to make some very difficult decisions regarding staffing and to have such issues debated publicly interferes with the ability of councillors to privately and frankly debate hard choices and causes unnecessary worry to staff before decisions have been made."