Stockport Council will have made more than £93 million of cuts to local services by 2016-17 and lost 25% of our overall workforce, but it looks as though even worse is in store from the most recent Local Government Finance Settlement.

There will be little respite for residents over the next Parliament, and, with £18.5 million scheduled to be slashed from the Council budget next year, the challenges locally are immediate.

Make no mistake, the cuts risks decimating vital and statutory provision in the borough, including in already over-stretched adult social care and children’s services.

Further cuts will be met with dismay across the North of England, where Local Authorities have been hit disproportionately hard since the Tories came to power in 2010.

It’s a strange sort of fairness which sees urban Councils like ours face taking more and more unpalatable decisions which hurt the frontline, whilst wealthy, rural (often Conservative) Councils in Southern England actually receive increases in funding.

The announcements in December made a dire financial position in Stockport more than £17.4 million worse and, with the Liberal Democrat Executive already using £4.6m from reserves to plug the black hole in their budget, there is a genuine threat to the financial sustainability of our Council.

For residents the Government’s changes are likely to mean a double whammy of increased Council Tax and cuts to highly valued services.

The Conservatives have ended the Council Tax Freeze Grant – which immediately costs Stockport Council around £1.4 million each year – and instead based their numbers on an assumption that every Council will raise Council Tax by 1.75% per year and also ask residents to pay a further 2% Adult Social Care Precept.

This Osborne Tax means bills across the country could rise by up to 4% this April. Council Tax is one of the most regressive ways to raise revenue, but, due to the financial circumstances forced upon them, many Local Authorities won’t have a choice but to increase it.

The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government can use all the warm words he likes, but the reality is that the Tories are planning to take away almost 70% of the Support Grant Stockport currently receives by 2020, and what crumbs they are offering go nowhere near off-setting the appalling consequences of the decisions they are taking.

Cllr Alex Ganotis, Leader of Stockport Labour Group