Council leader Phelim Mac Cafferty has said that the council “cannot take any more” cuts to funding amid fears of billions of pounds in public spending cuts.

New Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has said that cuts to public spending cannot be ruled out as the government tries to reassure financial markets after disruption caused by the mini-budget last month.

Mr Hunt said that “all departments will need to re-double their efforts to find savings”, failing to rule out cuts to welfare and to local government.

Councillor Mac Cafferty said: “The budget statement was clear - there are still going to be billions of pounds of public spending cuts.

“Local councils and communities have already suffered 12 years of brutal Tory cuts with one year settlements that don’t allow us to plan.

"We can’t take any more.”

The Argus: Chancellor Jeremy Hunt addressed Parliament about changes to the government's mini-budget yesterdayChancellor Jeremy Hunt addressed Parliament about changes to the government's mini-budget yesterday (Image: PA)

Brighton and Hove City Council claim to have had their annual funding cut by more than £100 million since the Conservatives took office in 2010.

Cllr Mac Cafferty’s criticism comes as experts warn there is no real “fat” for the government to cut in government departments.

A report, published by the Institute for Government and the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy, warns that Mr Hunt could find very little to trim from budgets that will not have further detrimental impacts on public services.

Nick Davies, programme director at the Institute for Government, said: “Public services are in a fragile state with little prospect of improvement before the next election.

“These are not isolated problems in specific services, but interconnected structural failures.

“In many cases, there are too few staff, with excessive workloads, working on outdated equipment, in rundown buildings.

“The pandemic exacerbated these problems but they are not new. This has been a lost decade for public services, with performance worse now than it was in 2010.”

Latest polling suggests that the Conservatives would lose every seat in Sussex if a general election was held today.

Tory MPs including Sir Peter Bottomley, Tim Loughton and treasury minister Andrew Griffith would all be ousted, according to a projection by political forecaster Electoral Calculus.