EDINBURGH City Council warned yesterday it may need to make more job cuts than previously anticipated unless it can raise council tax rates.

The Labour and SNP coalition has already announced 2,000 posts to go, many of which are in front-line jobs protecting children and vulnerable adults, in order to save £126 million by 2019.

However the council had made this announcement based on the Scottish government-imposed council tax freeze being lifted in 2017.

The council tax freeze is estimated to have cost the Scottish government more than £2.5 billion since its introduction in 2008.

Lothian MSP Neil Findlay called on the Scottish government to end “the starving of councils budgets.”

Mr Findlay said it was a “scandal” that “the SNP have sat back and crowed about a council tax freeze as jobs and services bite the dust.”

He called on the Scottish government to act now to “protect jobs and public services.”

The Scottish government insisted that local authorities had been protected from the worst of Tory austerity and that the council had received an additional £7 million to cope with the crisis.

But Unison City of Edinburgh branch have accused senior officials of putting pressure on councillors to reverse their no compulsory redundancies pledge, by attempting to bring the date of completion for the redundancies forward a year to April 2016.

Edinburgh City Council Unison President John Stevenson warned reducing the timescale for cutting 2,000 jobs to just six months was “creating a problem” and raised the threat of compulsory redundancies, which may lead to possible strike action to defend jobs.