Cash cuts could force charities to the wall

A meeting was held yesterday by JUST West Yorkshire at the Royal Armouries in Leeds for charities and black and minority ethnic groups to discuss their fears with council leaders.

Kirklees Council leader Mehboob Khan met delegates from groups such as Bradford Action for Refugees and Leeds Jewish Welfare Board.

Coun Khan said: "The cuts make me extremely worried.

"It's something that keeps me up at night, thinking about how we're going to manage to deliver good quality public services and protect vulnerable communities. The level of cuts is absolutely draconian.

"A meltdown in public services is what's coming. West Yorkshire councils are all driving very hard on improving efficiencies, but we'll have to be very honest with local people that services will be affected. You can't take this amount of money out of public services and not cut them."

The chairman of voluntary support consortium West Yorkshire Local Development Agencies, Chris Hollins, believes that cuts already hitting third sector organisations can only get worse.

"The immediate future is dire," he said. "There are going to be lots of organisations which will disappear, there are some which have gone already and organisations which have already faced cuts within the past few months or past couple of years."