Nearly 500 jobs lost in drive to cut budgets

Opening hours will be cut at libraries and museums in Hull, while ratepayers will see a 1.95 per cent increase in their council tax bills, just under the threshold to trigger a referendum.

Council tax will also rise 1.9 per cent in Barnsley where councillors yesterday agreed cuts which will see another 45 jobs go, on top of the 760 lost over the last three years.

In Hull the mobile library service will close, leisure services and streetscene will become wholly-owned arms length council companies and the frequency of grass-cutting and street-sweeping will be reduced.

Council leader Steve Brady said the cuts had been made with an “aching heart” but “people do understand what we are up against”.

He added: “When this Government talks about Big Society what they would like to see is people cleaning their own streets and cutting their own grass.”

But Lib Dem group leader Coun Mike Ross criticised Labour for “bad spending choices and poor administration”, citing changes to museum opening hours, which Lib Dems first proposed when they were in power. He said: “We know many of the real cuts will hit in the summer – long after the local elections are out of the way.”

Unions, which protested outside the city’s Guildhall, accused Labour of abdicating “their responsibility to protect residents” and said politicians should have joined them in a mass campaign “to go down to Westminster and demand the money back”.

In Barnsley a council tax discount for over-65s will be phased out. Coun Alan Gardiner said: “The days of the council being able to provide borough-wide services for as any people as possible are gone. While costs continue to grow, by 2016/17 we’ll have lost £70m per year from government, meaning that we have 40 per cent less money coming in from them than when this cuts agenda started.”