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Council leaders have defended cutting library hours in some of South Gloucestershire's most deprived neighbourhoods.

Cabinet members have rubber-stamped plans to slash £273,000 from the authority's libraries budget, which will see the district's 12 branches shut for an extra 40 hours in total every week.

There will be a new weekly half-day closures at Filton, Hanham, Kingswood, Downend, Staple Hill, Cadbury Heath, Patchway and Winterbourne.

Leaders said the cuts are not as severe as first proposed after saving £200,000 from dimming street lights at night.

Under the proposals, most libraries will close earlier – including Bradley Stoke, Emersons Green, Thornbury and Yate – to give each the same weekday staffed opening hours of 10:00 to 17:00, plus three hours on Saturday.

Speaking at a meeting on Monday, cabinet member for communities and local place Sean Rhodes said £200,000 annual savings from dimming street lights were being used to minimise cuts to libraries.

Lights will be dimmed to a quarter of their brightness from 23:00 to 06:00.

The original budget proposals were to reduce library spending by £473,000 a year.

Mr Rhodes said the smaller amount of savings needed, combined with feedback from a 12-week public consultation, meant the budget for books would go down by only half of the £50,000 initially planned.

He added that all branches would have longer staffed hours than first anticipated.

But councillor Liz Brennan told the cabinet: “We accept the reduction in the library budget was something you inherited but it was this administration who took the option to cut the services in the priority neighbourhoods.”

Mr Rhodes replied: “We have to balance the issue around footfall in different neighbourhoods, and actually the footfall for libraries is higher elsewhere than in priority neighbourhoods.

"Disproportionately cutting hours at libraries with big footfall doesn't necessarily make full sense."

He said many residents used more than one library so it was important to have a consistent service with the same hours.

"The crucial thing to acknowledge is that with the initial proposal, the potential impact of these changes was far greater, and officers have worked really hard to come up with a solution with us to mitigate this," Mr Rhodes added.

Cabinet member for children and young people Maggie Tyrrell said: "The response to the consultation just shows we have listened to what people said, and although none of us wanted to have to make cuts, we have probably got the best out of it that we possibly could."