Call for change in Town Hall funding

AS in countless towns and cities across the North, the years ahead are looking tough for political leaders in Barnsley as they wrestle with whether to increase the council tax burden on locals to help pay for vital public services.

- By ROB PARSONS Northern Agenda Editor

Leader Sir Stephen Houghton says the last decade of austerity has cost his council more than a billion in lost government funding, with youth clubs, early learning centres and libraries disappearing as a result as well as half the Labour authority's non-teaching staff.

And with a budget gap of £15m-20m in the next three years and the ever-increasing cost of paying for local adult social care, council tax rises are a sad inevitability for people in one of the country's most deprived areas as they struggle with a cost-of-living crisis.