Austerity is bringing public services to its knees in Calderdale, it is claimed.

The council’s Labour leader Tim Swift said that since 2010 central government grants to Calderdale have been halved from £137.7m per year to under £65m in 2017/18.

Since 2015 Government funding has been slashed by a further £20 million – and there’s no sign of this changing.

Clr Swift spoke out after the Labour group put forward plans for a 5.99% Council Tax rise - and 3% of that will be ring-fenced for social care. The final decision will be made at the council’s Budget meeting on February 26.

He said: “In Calderdale, as elsewhere, government policy is slowly but surely bringing public services to their knees.

“Labour believes ‘austerity’ has to stop.

“Over two thirds of our day-to-day spending now goes on care for older people and vulnerable children .

“These remain our top budget priorities, yet maintaining them, without raising council tax, has become virtually impossible.

“Year after year, the government slashes our ‘rate support grant’. Believe it or not, by 2021, we will have virtually no central grant at all.

“Clearly the Conservatives want Calderdale people to blame the council for the tax increases which inevitably follow – and which are forced on us.

“Yet local Conservative councillors haven’t the courage to join Labour in fighting for a fair deal for local communities .

“Instead, they try to trick taxpayers into thinking there is some kind of mysterious ‘black hole’ in the council’s budget.

“This is quite untrue – as the publicly available reports of our independent auditors repeatedly prove.”