DEVON County Council leader John Hart has thanked the thousands of local people who took part in the 'Tough Choices' spending consultation making it the biggest such exercise staged by the authority.

Almost 1,000 people attended the 15 public meetings in market towns across the county over a 12-week period this autumn. Each of them had the opportunity to question Mr Hart and take part in an exercise designed to demonstrate where they would take £50-million from the authority's budget in the coming financial year.

In addition, more than 33,500 people took part via the Tough Choices website by completing an online survey or sharing their ideas for improving the way the council operates or how it could save money. Top public priorities for continued or additional funding were protecting children from abuse, home care for the elderly, support for people who care for others and supporting children with special needs.

Those services most identified for savings were street lighting, tourism promotion and public transport subsidies.

A common theme was that savings needed to be made on Devon's home to school transport bill which exceeds £20-million. Another common theme was that early years and extended schools' initiatives were less essential than the budgets for schools and safeguarding. Other ideas to emerge strongly in the public meetings included all services taking a share of any reductions and a focus on reducing administrative and management costs first.

However, people also called on the council to protect jobs as much as possible.

Other suggestions included working more closely with other public sector bodies to cut costs and raising income through the introduction of charges for some services or the sale of assets such as buildings and land.

Mr Hart thanked the thousands of people who have taken part in the Tough Choices consultations and vowed that their views would be taken into account as the authority finalises its budget.

'I have spent the last few months meeting people in every part of Devon to find out their views and priorities and I have been heartened by the response,' he said. 'This has been an enormously positive exercise and I am very grateful to so many people for giving up their time and taking part.

'I think people have been surprised to learn what a complex organisation the county council is and how it has an impact on so many areas of daily life in Devon. There is no doubt that we face tough choices ahead but the feedback from the people of Devon will help my colleagues and I take the decisions we have to take over the coming weeks.'

Among the local people who attended the roadshows were Ewan Rae, the secretary of the Devon Heartlands Community Forum.

He said: 'We now feel better informed about the decisions being made and hopefully the leader feels better informed about the views of people in the area.'