THE leader of Wyre Forest District Council says some “big choices” will need to be made if the authority takes up the Government’s offer of an extended council tax freeze.

Chancellor George Osborne announced in his spending review last month that council tax would be frozen for a further two years until 2016 and the local authority resource budget would be slashed by 10 per cent in 2015/16.

It means councillors at Wyre Forest House will have to carefully balance cost to the tax payer with the level of service theycan provide.

The council has already frozen council taxfor the last three years and Labour had argued during this year’s budget setting accepting the Government freeze grant would result in the “whittling away of the council’s precept-raised resources”.

Council leader, Conservative councillor John Campion, said: “We are very proud we have been able to freeze council tax but there are some big choices to make as to whether we can afford to do it. The community is under financial pressure so we needtogoas faraswe can to protect them but balance that with what services we can provide.

“Part of the problem is we can’t take much more. We have performed amazingly well in budget reductions and if central Government had performed at the same level we had there would not be the deficit problem we have got in this country.

“We have lost a quarter of our spending power – 48 per cent of our Government grant – in the last four years. Nobody got into local government to cut services.

“We will be redoubling our already redoubled efforts to see which savings we can make to make sure it is not affecting services toomuch.”

Worcestershire County Council leader,Conservative Adrian Hardman, signed a letter published in The Observer, saying local authorities “cannot be stretched much further” and cuts were “having a serious impact on local services”.