SUPPORT services for vulnerable people have been hit by an £800,000 reduction in Government funding.

North Yorkshire County Council says cuts have left care groups struggling to maintain levels of support and has criticised the Government for its "backdoor cuts" in budgets for local authority services.

The county's Supporting People Commissioning Body (SPCB) provides funding to help a wide variety of vulnerable people live independently in the community.

These include people with learning disabilities, older people in sheltered housing, the homeless and people recently released from prison.

However, the county council said that large-scale reductions in Government funding over the past two years amounted to a cut of £800,000 for the SPCB.

Last year, there was a budget reduction of £364,000 and this year there will be a further cut of more than £424,000.

The commissioning body is now trying to identify areas where cuts can be made without having too large an impact on services.

It is considering several ways of meeting the deficit, and said it may have to look at services that have higher costs per person.

But it admitted that making cuts in these services would leave vulnerable people getting less and less one-to-one help from a support worker.

The body has already applied a zero inflation rate to all contracted services.

Councillor Murray Naylor is the chairman of the scrutiny committee that oversees the supporting people project.

He said: "The money received from the Government is ring-fenced for specific projects, so it is not part of the county council or district council budgets. But it does have a knock-on effect in the contracts, we are able to arrange for support services.

"This is another example of Government applying backdoor cuts in budgets for local authority services. We will need to ensure service users continue to get support to live independently, but we simply have not been given enough money to meet the current level of contracted services."

The SPCB in North Yorkshire administers the services jointly and is made up of the county council, district councils, primary care trusts and the probation service.