PARKING your car, recycling garden waste, tackling rat infestations and playing sport will all cost more after Oxford City Council agreed a £9m cuts package last night.

Charges for scores of services will increase above the rate of inflation, including a new £35 charge for collecting garden waste and higher fees for pest control services.

Parking charges, sports pitch hire and the cost of burial plots will all rise.

At Worcester Street car park, the fee for an hour’s stay will rise by 80p to £3.10 from April.

The council, which is planning to spend £25.7m in 2011-12, says the fee rises are needed to help it minimise the impact on services as it makes £9m of cuts in its spending over the next four years.

Services including out-of-hours noise control, street wardens and planning enforcement will be reduced.

Grants to community groups will be trimmed back and a question mark hangs over future funding of Dial-a-Ride bus services for the disabled.

Some 110 council jobs will be lost as part of the cost-cutting measures.

The only charge that remains unaltered will be the authority’s share of council tax bills, which will be frozen for the next 12 months, with the help of Government cash.

But the tax will rise by three per cent a year from April next year.

The council’s Labour administration said the need for cuts was due to a 25 per cent fall in Government funding, which it branded a “savage attack”.

But opposition groups said that Labour was being too cautious and urged it to spend more of the council’s reserves and contingency funds to maintain frontline services.

Labour deputy leader Ed Turner said: “It is the hardest budget we have ever faced in Oxford.

“We have tried desperately, in the face of extremely difficult circumstances, to make this work.”

Unusual money-saving plans include remote-controlled gates at cemeteries, to save the £9,000 it costs to send members of staff to lock and unlock them each day.

The second largest party at the Town Hall, the Liberal Democrats, called for Temple Cowley Pools to remain open for at least four years.

The Temple Road facility is set to be sold next year to help pay for a new £8.5m swimming complex alongside Blackbird Leys Leisure Centre.

The Lib Dems called for the council’s six area committees, which make planning decisions and address neighbourhood issues, to be retained in their present form.

However, under Labour plans, they will in future meet quarterly and lose their planning powers to two new committees for the north and south of the city.

The Lib Dems also called for the community grants budget to be increased by £200,000. The group said removing two middle management posts and cutting councillors’ allowances by 10 per cent would provide the money.

Lib Dem leader Stephen Brown said: “We believe the contingency set aside of some £10m over the four-year period is excessively cautious.”

Green Party councillors also called for Temple Cowley Pools to be saved, in a budget plan that would have stopped closure of St Clement’s car park and retained free garden waste collections.

It would have paid for these through even higher fee increases and pay cuts for senior staff.

Both alternative budgets were voted down by the Labour group.