Did Kirklees get a raw deal from council spending cuts announced this week? Local Government Reporter BARRY GIBSON investigates

AT first glance, this week’s spending plans for English councils don’t look good for the Government.

While it’s true that every local authority is sharing the pain, they certainly aren’t sharing it equally.

Communities secretary Eric Pickles announced on Monday that no council will face a cut of more than 8.9% in the next two years as the Government struggles to reduce the deficit.

But nearly all the 36 councils taking the maximum hit are in urban areas which tend to vote Labour – places like Manchester, Liverpool and Doncaster.

In West Yorkshire, next year’s cuts range from 8.81% in Bradford to 4.26% in Kirklees.

But the figures in some of the more prosperous Conservative-inclined parts of the country make much easier reading: a 0.61% cut in Richmond-upon-Thames, 0.6% in Buckinghamshire, 0.31% in Surrey.

Local government expert Dr John Anchor believes some of this difference is inevitable.

The University of Huddersfield lecturer said: “The percentage cut in Government grants is higher in the bigger metropolitan areas, but the level of spending is higher in those places in the first place.”

Dr Anchor, who works at the university’s Business School, pointed out that London boroughs were among those facing heavy cuts.

“It’s not really about North versus South, it’s more urban versus rural,” he said.

“But it’s a mixed picture. For instance, Kirklees is a metropolitan council, but it includes large rural areas.”

Council leader Clr Mehboob Khan is convinced the North is being unfairly targeted.

Yesterday the Greenhead Labour man said: “The figures for Kirklees are as bad as we feared and there is no denying that this remains the biggest attack on council services in living memory.

“The Tory-led government has acted with indecent haste in making cuts which are so deep and so quick. They are being driven by right-wing ideology to shrink the state – and it is the most vulnerable who will suffer.

“'They clearly do not care about providing services to the less well-off and more vulnerable members of society.”

But Clr Robert Light, who leads the opposition Conservatives on Kirklees, rejects any idea that the Tories are picking on the North.

The Birstall and Birkenshaw man said: “Clr Khan and his Labour colleagues have been saying this for weeks but the facts don’t bear it out. We’ve done much better in Kirklees than he said we would.

“The Government has done a lot to protect the North and recognise that the North needs a substantial redistribution of resources.

“We’ve got a better deal than many people were predicting.”