TamarTag users are to be hit with a new 80p a month account charge – amid claims that the results of a public consultation on the issue have been ignored.

Drivers use the electronic tags for concessionary crossings on the Tamar Bridge and Torpoint Ferry.

Both Plymouth City Council and Cornwall Council, which run the Tamar crossings on a joint basis, this week gave the go-ahead for the new charge.

The levy was recommended as part of the Tamar Bridge and Torpoint Ferry budget for 2014/15 as a monthly fee for using the prepaid electronic toll payment system.

Cornwall councillors on Tuesday heard that despite significant efficiency savings and changes to spending plans, there was still a need to increase income by approximately five per cent or £500,000 a year from April in order to stick to the bridge and ferry business plan and also to maintain adequate financial reserves.

Plymouth City Council on Monday approved the introduction of the charge and the following day Cornwall councillors voted by a large majority to support it.

Councillor Bert Biscoe told Tuesday's council meeting that the question of charging was not simply a local issue because the bridge was a 'strategic piece of Cornwall's infrastructure' connecting it to England.

But Saltash councillor and joint bridge and ferry committee member Derek Holley said the proposed charge was a 'cheap and easy' solution for the joint committee which ignored the findings of the public consultation held late last year.

He said the consultation showed that 58 per cent of respondents thought any increase should be met by drivers who pay with cash, while 23 per cent favoured an increase in the tag and just 19 per cent supported the new charge.

Cllr Holley said that if the councils were going to undertake consultations, they should give them more weight than the 'lip service' people believe they gave them.

Looe councillor Armand Toms, who explained that he was a tag holder himself, said the proposed charge penalised local people who were being asked to pay for an increase in the councils' revenues. Figures showed, he said, that 20 per cent of people living in Looe worked in Plymouth.

But Saltash councillor and co-chair of the joint committee Bob Austin said he and his colleagues had spent a long time discussing the proposal and consulting the public.

He said that opponents of the account fee were not regular users whereas local businesses who crossed the bridge two or three times a day would make savings through this rather than another approach.

The TamarTag was introduced in 2007 and the charge for crossing by road or ferry was last increased in March 2010.

Tolls currently raise about £9m a year and it is expected the new charge could raise an extra £506,000 a year.

Car drivers paying cash to use the bridge or ferry face a charge of £1.50. The TamarTag allows car drivers to make a crossing for 75p.