A major professional services house has said in a report that Britain needs to rein in its budget deficit at a pace faster than planned to control debt problems, balancing the budget by the 2015/16 tax year rather than 2017/18.

Regardless of the shape of the economy, Britain's government would be shelling out £43 billion more in today's money than it receives in taxation -- a fiscal gap of 3% of GDP, the report estimates.

Britain's April budget has plans to help closing this gap by 2017/18, but an additional £26 billion of savings and higher taxes -- around 1.8 % of GDP -- should be made before that perios to balance the budget by 2015/16.

The professional services firm urged a similar high paced programme of fiscal tightening in March. This was when the government still had expectations of balancing the budget by 2015/16 and the professional services firm proposed a 2013/14 deadline.

The economy worsened since then, because of which a 2015/16 balanced budget seems the earliest realistic option, said a co-author of the report.

'Higher public borrowing was unavoidable in the short term, but government has a responsibility to plan now to put the public finances back on a sustainable footing in the medium term,' he added.

What this means is there would be a need to increase in the rate of income tax, National Insurance social security payments and value-added tax on goods and services to raise the sums required, the report added.