Scotland’s leading charity for older people has urged Dundee City Council to rethink its budget plans.
Councillors will be asked to approve a range of inflation-busting increases to service charges when they vote on the budget for 2016-17 on February 25.
But Age Scotland has slammed the proposals they say will impact some of the city’s most vulnerable people.
Dundee Pensioners’ Forum has also said the council should raise council tax rather than penalise the city’s elderly population through increased service charges and a hike in the cost of burial lairs.
The council has to find £23 million of savings in the next financial year and is proposing increasing charges for a number of services.
These and other cost-cutting measures will save the council around £14m, meaning £9m of savings will still have to be found.
The council intends to raise meal charges by 10p, to £3.20, and increase the price of social and respite care at home from £13.77 to £13.95 an hour.
An Age Scotland spokesman said: “It is obviously deeply disappointing that local authorities are targeting older people and the services they find so vital to cover the shortfall in funding.
“The people who are using these services are some of the most vulnerable in society and we would encourage any council to think again when raising the cost of services.”
He added: “If older people are struggling with bills then we would encourage them to ring our freephone helpline, Silver Line Scotland, on 0800 4 708090.
“Since the helpline was started in November 2013 we have helped people with benefit checks and identified hundreds of thousands of pounds of unclaimed benefits for those who need it most.”
Erik Cramb, a member of Dundee Pensioners’ Forum, said his organisation would rather money was raised by an increase in council tax instead of charging more for services.
He said: “Willie Sawers (Dundee City Council finance spokesman) came to speak at our meeting last Friday and said that the council had three principles regarding these cuts.
“The first is to protect frontline services, the second was to have no compulsory redundancies and the third was to protect the council tax freeze.
“Basically, we understand the first two but see no sense in continuing the council tax freeze for another year.”
Mr Cramb said the increase in the cost of burial lairs is particularly worrying for the elderly given the expense of funerals.
He added: “The increase in social care costs is where the most vulnerable people are being hit and we would express our disappointment at that.
“The fact is unless local governments’ income is increased they are not going to be able to protect frontline services.”