Council tax in Swindon is set to rise by 5.8 per cent next year.

The average Band D household will pay £778 from the start of the next financial year compared with £735 this year.

The Government has released its provisional guidelines on what the borough council should be spending from April 2001.

According to the provisional Standard Spending Assessment, Swindon faces a spending increase of 3.4 per cent on this year.

That is well below the national average of 4.9 per cent and the unitary authority average of 4.3 per cent, meaning that the council will get less money for services from the government than it would like. It will therefore have to raise extra money through a rise in council tax.

The borough will have to raise the council tax levels just to keep services operating within government guidelines, rather than improving them.

The SSA figures are only provisional and the final version will not be released until January. Househol-ders faced a rise in council tax of 6.1 per cent this year and the social services budget still had to be cut.

The overall council tax next year will also be affected by the parish council and police authority needs, so there will be variations from area to area.

Ian Thompson, the council's director of finance, said: "Next year's rise in the SSA is significantly below the national average or the unitary average. Overall, the settlement for Swindon is not as good as previously anticipated.

"Given the pressures for increased service levels, or in some cases, the cost of 'standing still', the council will have to makes some difficult choices over priorities as the service planning process moves forward."

One of the factors which might have affected next year's SSA is the fact that the Government is giving out grants centrally to social service organisations and schools at a local level.

So the council's SSA is less to allow for the extra money being allocated to individual organisations.

Council leader Sue Bates (Lab, Pinehurst and Gorse Hill) said: "We have to put this SSA into the context that we had two extremely good settlements in the last two years and the Government has to balance the SSAs for everyone across the country.

"It is a disappointing settlement and now we have to work out how we will move forward from a standstill to improve services.

"You also have to realise that a lot of grants are being given out centrally so this will also affect things."