WILTSHIRE County Council is likely to buck the trend of recent years and set a council tax increase of less than five per cent.

The cabinet, the council's decision making body, will recommend tomorrow whether the percentage rise should be 3.3 per cent, 3.9 per cent or 4.5 per cent.

For a Band D property the existing council tax bill from the county council is £852 a year. A 3.3 per cent rise would increase the tax by £28; 3.9 per cent by £33 and 4.5 per cent by £38.

For 2004/5 the county council increased the council tax by 5.98 per cent and the year before that raised it by 10.8 per cent.

All councils have been warned by the Government that a council tax rise of more than five per cent is likely to lead them being capped.

But the county council is in a better position than previous years as it has received more Revenue Support Grant from the Government than it anticipated.

The grant has increased by £22 million or 9.4 per cent thanks to an additional £408 million set aside for local councils by the Government, which was not forecast.

Before the grant was announced, county council treasurer Mike Prince said the council had anticipated getting an increase of around £2 million and based on that, the council had thought it would have £394 million to spend on services.

With the increased grant the council will be spending an extra £32 million on this year's budget of £376 million.

The grant from the Government is a provisional figure and the total amount of Government funding will be finalised at the end of January.

Once that is known, education, social services, environment and other departments will finalise their individual budgets.

It is possible that departments with financial years ending March 31 who overspent will have to carry their deficits over to the following year.

The children and education department is forecasting an overspend of £1.767 million despite receiving extra funding from the council earlier in the year.

The overspend is largely due to the high cost of looking after children in foster care or specialist placements.

Central and library services is forecasting an overspend of £558,000 and adult and community services £450,000.

This brings the total potential overspend for the council to £2.750 million.

The other option for the council is to take money from its balances to pay off the overspend.

However, this would result in the balances being in a worse position than at the start of the financial year. Then the figure was £4.385 million and at the end of March it is projected to be £3.720 million.

For the council's capital programme Mr Prince is recommending spending £10 million on projects next year and £9.9 million the following year. The largest amount will be spent on the new county record office at Chippenham.

A full meeting of the county council will decide the level of council tax and next year's budget on February 8.

Added to the county council's share of the council tax bill will be amounts from district, town and parish councils, police and fire authorities.