A £5 ‘average’ increase in the Dorset and Wiltshire Fire and Rescue precept has been agreed.

It will mean a rise from £79.43 a year to £84.43 per year for band D properties.

A meeting yesterday heard that despite the budget agreement the authority’s budget could be blown off course by a number of unknown factors, including a lack of information on Home Office grants towards pensions, typically worth £2.7 million per year, and uncertainty over pay awards.

Chief officer Ben Ansell told the meeting that the authority had budgeted for 2 per cent pay awards for this year and next – but those agreed so far were running at more than double that, already adding an extra £1.65m to costs this year.

He said that a statement from the London authority that it would offer inflation level increases of 11 per cent to its firefighters had been ‘unhelpful’ and would put pressure on other fire authorities to match that amount in nationally agreed pay negotiations.

He said that if the pay dispute did go to strike action, it would incur extra costs for the service to bring in emergency back up.

Dorset Cllr Byron Quayle, who chairs the service finance committee, said councillors had no alternative but to accept the budget and continue to press, through MPs, for extra funding for fire and rescue services.

The meeting heard that if a larger than anticipated pay award was agreed the service would have to turn to its reserve funding to meet the extra expenditure.

Around 80 per cent of the authority’s costs relate to spending on staff with around 75% of its total funding coming from the precept on council tax, with the remainder mainly from Government grants.

The agreed precept amount will give the authority revenue funding of £66.7m for the coming financial year.

The authority also has a capital budget which includes £8 million set aside for a revamp of the existing training centre in Swindon and a new-build training centre behind the Weymouth fire station, which has yet to go for planning consent.

That budget has £7.1m in it with the costs of the Weymouth centre expected to be spread over more than one financial year, including borrowing.

The biggest capital item for the coming financial year is more than £4m for replacement vehicles.