A £3M Council windfall will be ploughed into services for vulnerable children and adults, if its latest budget plans are approved on Thursday.

Council tax will rise by the maximum amount allowed - nearly six per cent - this year, under the final proposals unveiled by the Council’s Labour bosses today.

Council leader Susan Hinchcliffe said the Government had given them “no other choice” than to hike tax, because of a major funding shortfall for social care.

She said: “We do believe, absolutely, that using council tax in this way to fund adult social care and children’s social care is wrong.

“It is a regressive tax. It bears no relation to people’s income. It is just about the property they hold.”

The Council has to make around £30m in savings by 2020.

Most of the ruling Labour group’s budget plans for the next two years remain unchanged from those revealed last December, when a public consultation began. They include cuts to museums and galleries, highway maintenance and youth services.

But the authority is now expecting to receive £3.3m of extra cash for the forthcoming financial year.

This is partly due to the Government’s decision to raise the cap on council tax hikes from 4.99 per cent to 5.99 per cent - which includes a 3 per cent social care levy. It will bring in an extra £1.8m from taxpayers.

Extra money is also coming from a Government grant and business rate income.

As a result, a total of £1.35m will be put back into children’s social work over the next three years.

Councillor Val Slater, executive member for health and wellbeing, said there was growing concern at the caseloads of Bradford’s social workers.

She said their workload was "out of step" with social workers at other councils and the extra money would help to tackle this.

Controversial plans to cut hundreds of jobs in the department overseeing children’s centres has yet to be decided upon.

But if the Council decides to plough ahead with this, £1m is now being allocated to fund a transition period.

A further £1.8m is being put into reserves, with council bosses saying it would likely be spent on social care in future.

Opposition Conservative leader, Councillor Simon Cooke, accused Labour of “smoke and mirrors” over cut-backs to children’s services.

He said while the £1m transitional fund for early help for children sounded like good news in the short term, the full effect of any shake-up wouldn’t be fully felt until 2020.

Councillor Jeanette Sunderland, leader of the Liberal Democrat group, said if she and her group were running the council, they too “would have to” put up council tax by the maximum amount.

But she said Labour was still spending money poorly.

She said: “We will continue to hold Labour to account for the poor choices they make, while campaigning to make the central government pay back to Bradford our fair share of income tax.”