The council's budget consultation process has been branded "a sham" after just 22 people responded.

Residents had until January 25 to give their views on the proposed budget - which includes a council tax rise of nearly five per cent, price hikes for town car parks, and cuts to services such as the park wardens.

But just 22 consultation documents were returned to the council, some of which were from groups such as the Pensioners Forum and the Youth Parliament.

Opposition leader Councillor Paul Scully criticised the poor response rate at an executive meeting on Monday.

"If you're only going to have 22 people respond then why bother? Either do something meaningful or not at all," he said.

His party claimed to have matched this response rate by spending 10 minutes in Sutton town centre asking people to fill in the form. Members also claimed that the consultation questions - such as "do you agree that we should take more action early to avoid problems in the future?" - were designed to get a positive response.

"This consultation was a lame duck before it even started. The questions are simplistic and very leading.

"We took to the streets and managed in 10 minutes to achieve what it took the Lib Dem council six weeks to do. If they think that this microscopic response to their sham consultation will legitimise an above inflation council tax increase they're living on another planet," said Councillor Terry Faulds.

The council said it believed the low response rate was a result of the "benign budget" and compared the situation to last year's controversial budget when about 1,000 responses were received.

"I would hazard a guess that if it had been proposing closing a few libraries our response rate would have been numbering thousands. We have a really benign budget," said chief executive of the council Paul Martin.

The final budget will be announced at the executive's next meeting on Tuesday, February 19.