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met in sombre mood.

There was just one item on the agenda. A proposal to implement £10.09 million pounds of cuts from this year's budget with the loss of 88 jobs.

Every council is having to make emergency cuts but Norfolk is the first to actually vote them through.

In the public gallery were local union members who'd been demonstrating outside -including people who were about to lose their jobs.

They'd been telling councillors to look elsewhere for savings - how about management pay? Or council receptions? Or what about cancelling a few ceremonies ? But the appeals fell on deaf ears.

Councillor Daniel Cox, Conservative leader of the council, acknowledged that making cuts "was not easy or comfortable, there were no easy solutions."

But as the Government had withdrawn funding support from Education and Transport, that's where the axe should fall.

The list of cuts ran to 11 pages.

On page 1, a 50% cut to the Connexions service which provides careers advice and support to young people: 65 jobs will go.

Money and jobs are also being cut from school development support and the teenage pregnancy strategy unit. There'll be no more funded school holiday activites in the summer, no more grants to youth groups and reduced parenting support programmes.

And then there are 58 local transport and road safety schemes - junction improvements, new pavements and bus shelters which are all put on hold.

The opposition parties were angry, particularly about Connexions.

"The cuts to Connexions are more savage than anywhere else in the country" declared Paul Morse, the Liberal Democrat group leader.

"This is a false economy," said Jennifer Toms of the Greens. "You are slashing a service which improves lives and cuts crime".

Alison Thomas, the cabinet member for Children's Services said Connexions would still receive £2.8 million of funding and would still provide an important service for those who needed it.

"What we're doing is addressing the huge deficit the country is facing at the moment and we're having to make the hard decisions the previous Government didn't. It is painful and there'll be more to come".

And she meant it - as soon as the Council approved the cuts (by 45 to 18 votes) it announced that it was facing a spending shortfall of £155 million pounds over the next three years. Work will start next week to identify possible areas for savings.

"There is no doubt that the County Council is facing the biggest challenges since it was established in the 1970s" said Mr Cox, "but there is no point in putting our heads in the sand - that would be disastrous".

One council official put it a bit more bluntly: "I really don't think people in Norfolk know what's coming their way" she said.

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