WITH the recent announcement by George Osborne of 25 to 40 per cent cuts to all unprotected departments, councils around the country face a horrendous situation in the next few years, Brighton and Hove included.

It is not the case, as Councillor Warren Morgan suggests, that the Green administration left the city ill-prepared for this situation.

Throughout our term we rose to the challenge of the relentless and continuing government attack on public services and worked hard to minimise the impact on the city.

We were one of the few councils around the country which, in spite of being cut more than most, managed to maintain children’s centres, libraries, supported bus routes, public parks and highway improvements.

Much of what Labour is calling for, reducing the council building foot-print and reducing management costs and other efficiencies, we were already doing or preparing for.

There are not many more efficiencies to be found and the need for further savings will mean our public services are spread more thinly or cut completely.

Councillor Morgan says the current situation takes us “beyond party politics”.

However, it is crystal clear that these cuts are as much about the Conservative-led ideology of a shrunken state as they are about the need to cutting the national deficit.

Labour’s lack of opposition in parliament to the latest austerity budget was disappointing.

I would have hoped for more from this Labour administration than to, just as meekly, pass on these cuts to local public services.

Labour is in danger of presiding over a ‘bleeding stump’ approach, in which they unquestioningly pass on central government cuts, so that vital services are in danger of being lost or severely damaged.

There has to be a better approach to delivering next year’s council budget than this.

  • Ollie Sykes is a Brighton and Hove City Councillor for the Green Party for Bruns-wick and Adelaide