Councillors turned down a 9% rise earlier this month

An increase of 7.19% was agreed after a three-hour debate by councillors at County Hall.

It means Band D households will pay an additional �56 a year for services such as education, highways and social care, taking their bills to �837.

Earlier this month, councillors turned down a 9% rise and asked the council executive to reconsider.

Council leader John Lobb said it had been a difficult decision, but savings would have to be made.

Job losses

"Members raised the problems which we face, for example, with waste disposal, landfill tax and on-going concerns in respect of child services.

"We have tried to balance that against the ability of people in Cornwall to pay because we are aware we have a low wage economy in Cornwall," he said.

The portfolio holder for public protection, Jill Ferrett, said there could be job losses in the future if money was not found to pay the �750,000 for the firefighters' pay settlement.

"I will have to borrow �300,000 from the government to fund the pay deal this year.

"That is one-off funding and I will have to repay that next year.

"We have made no allowance for that repayment in the budget we have just passed, so I have got to find that money next year.

"If we haven't changed something by then, we are going to have problems and we are probably talking redundancies," she said.