HART’S council leader says residents are set to benefit from “a good deal” despite a significant reduction in Government funding to the district council.

Local authorities are currently counting the cost of the harshest cuts in funding support for a generation.

As a result, council chiefs in the Hart district will lose £600,000 of its grant for the next financial year. The authority was expecting to receive £3.5million but this has been slashed to £2.9m.

But council leader Councillor Ken Crookes told The Gazette the final figure held no surprises for him and measures already undertaken should protect frontline services.

He said: “This is pretty much what we expected – we already knew there were going to be some hard decisions to be made in the budget.

“We have been working over the last two years to make major savings and we have been able to protect frontline services – we aim to continue to do this.”

Local authorities are being told they must freeze council tax for the next year, which Cllr Crookes said will benefit residents.

He said: “For residents it’s a very good deal – a freeze in council tax for the first time in living memory and minimal impact on services. There may be some impact that is visible to residents but it will be relatively small.”

Cllr Crookes said the brunt of the cuts would be felt by the council as service reviews have, and will continue to, lead to redundancies.

He added the council’s own savings programme, carried out in conjunction with consultancy firm Improvement and Efficiency South East, has made the authority more cost-effective by introducing a number of new measures, including outsourcing certain services.