MP Lucy Allan vows to fight for 'fair' funding deal for Telford & Wrekin Council

Ms Allan said she will ask Greg Clark MP, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, to meet the council to ensure it receives the right funding from central Government.

The council has claimed it will lose the equivalent of £11 million of funding a year for local services under the new local government settlement, which the government will vote on today.

Telford & Wrekin Council says Government figures show that the average "spending power" for English councils is £1,829 per home next year. But for Telford & Wrekin it is only £1,676 – equivalent to £153 less a year for every home in the borough.

Mrs Allan said: "I will be asking the Local Government Minister to meet with Telford & Wrekin Council, to discuss the funding formula for Telford and to seek reassurances that we are getting a fair deal."

Wrekin MP, Mark Pritchard, whose constituency crosses both Shropshire and Telford & Wrekin Council, encouraged the authority to use the power of its local MPs more in a bid to raise money that could help services.

He said: "The council's leadership needs to recognise the merits of working with local MPs to secure better funding rather than trying to attack the Government all the time."

Councillor Lee Carter, cabinet member for finance, said: "All we ask for is fairness and we will be seeking support from our local MPs, local residents, businesses and other concerned parties to press the Government to bring the borough up to average through a mechanism that offers some form of reward for councils like Telford & Wrekin who keep their bills as low as possible."

The council said that if it received just the average level of "spending power" it would be able to avoid many of the service cuts it now faces including to libraries, youth services, and community centres. It could also cut its debt by around a quarter over the next five years.

Spending power is a Government calculation for how much councils receive, and is made up of a Government grant, council tax and businesses rates, of which the council currently keeps 49 per cent.

The council says this is because it is a low council tax authority with the second lowest council tax in the region.

This is compounded by almost two thirds of homes in the borough falling in the lowest A and B council tax bands. The average home in England is in the more expensive band D.