REVIEWS to adult social care spending will ‘hurt disabled people twice' a local support group has said.

Gordon Pybus, the chairman of Darlington Association on Disability has said the council is contravening government guidance by changing the criteria for those eligible for social care in order to make financial savings of around £675,000.

However, the council has said it has traditionally been more generous than other authorities.

In addition, the proposed changes will help reflect the authority's ‘Personalisation agenda' which aims to support people to care for themselves at home.

The authority is carrying out consultation on the review of its eligibility criteria for adult social care.

People needing social care are graded into four bands - critical, substantial, moderate and low level needs.

The council's current policy, developed nine year's ago, stated that the council would meet critical, substantial and moderate levels of need, but not low level.

However, in practice, all four levels have been funded over the years.

The council, which is having to cut its adult social budget by 10 per cent, is now proposing to focus its funding on only the most vulnerable people with critical and substantial needs.

Mr Pybus said the council has a duty to review its criteria to enable it pass on services to the voluntary sector.

However, he said it should not be done to achieve savings but, in some cases, government guidance was that money should be put into schemes to help them achieve best practice.

Mr Pybus said: "This has been brought in as part of the cuts and flies in the face of guidelines. It's absolutely wrong.

"People need this support to enable them to live independently and they're taking their means to independence away from them.

"A lot of disabled people are very, very upset that this proposal has been put out.

"The council has a lot of hard decisions to make but they've a duty to promote equality for disabled people.

"Disabled people are part of the general public so they're getting hit by all the other cuts and then with this proposal they're getting hurt twice."

A spokeswoman for the council said: "The approach was informed by central government policy direction, by custom and practice throughout local government and by the need for the council to review all areas of expenditure.

"Consultation has taken place with service users throughout June and early July to fully understand any impact of the proposed changes."