LABOUR councillors lined up to lambast the Government’s “extraordinary” and “staggering” allocation of much of a £300 million crisis fund to wealthy southern shires, as they backed plans to slash another £104 million from their budget.

Durham County Council’s Labour leader Simon Henig said Communities Secretary Greg Clark had delivered an “extraordinary handout of millions of pounds to areas which need it least”, while his deputy Alan Napier described the move as unfair and absolutely staggering.

Cabinet member Ossie Johnson slammed the “diabolical cuts” facing northern councils and his colleague Neil Foster called the settlement as cynical a stroke as he had ever seen in politics and joked of setting up a collection bucket at County Hall to support leafy Wokingham and Surrey councils.

When Teesside-born Mr Clark finally announced Government funding levels for English councils for 2016-17 last Monday (February 8), he trumpeted a £300 million fund to help ease a planned move to local business rate retention, which will see business taxes being kept locally rather than redistributed according to need, and £93 million to help rural councils.

But hard-up North-East town halls have largely missed out, with Durham losing £16.5 million, or 2.5 per cent, of its Core Spending Power (CSP), the Government’s preferred funding measure, in the year ahead.

Cllr Napier said Mr Clark had bowed to pressure from shire Tory MPs and compared to provisional figures announced in December Surrey will be £11.9 million better off, Hampshire £9.3 million, North Yorkshire £9.1 million, Devon £8.3 million, Hertfordshire £7.7 million, Essex £6.9 million and West Sussex £6.1 million.

The best faring Labour-controlled council was Northumberland, down in 34th, which will be £2 million better off than expected.

Durham will have cut more than £270 million from its pre-austerity budget by March, but faces another £104 million of savings by 2019-20.

Another 400 jobs will be lost, on top of 1,950 axed since 2010; £13.5 million of reserves will be used by March 2018; and council tax is expected to rise by 3.9 per cent this year.

Cllr Henig said: “We’re heading for a decade of austerity. Councils will be very different, largely reduced to statutory duties only, and with a much smaller footprint.”

Emphasising the “manifest unfairness” of the settlement, he added: “Effectively Government is saying services in Durham will be less than other parts of the country, despite the fact that needs in Durham are far greater than other parts of the country.”

Final decisions on the council’s 2016-17 budget will be taken by a full council meeting next Wednesday (February 24).

*THE Northern Echo has launched an online petition urging the Government to review its unfair funding formula. Sign it at petition.parliament.uk/petitions/120696