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		</div><p><a href="http://londonglossy.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/council-chiefs-vent-anger-over-cuts.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-full" title="Liberal Democrat council chiefs accused Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles of refusing to work with councillors" src="http://londonglossy.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/min-council-chiefs-vent-anger-over-cuts.jpg" alt="Liberal Democrat council chiefs accused Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles of refusing to work with councillors"/></a></p>
<p>Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg is facing resistance from Liberal Democrat council chiefs over the pace and scale of the coalition Government&#8217;s spending cuts.</p>
<p>An open letter signed by 88 local Lib Dem heads, including 17 town hall leaders, warned that the cuts would damage the economy and hit the most vulnerable.</p>
<p>They accused Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles of &#8220;letting down&#8221; users of council services and refusing to work with councillors.</p>
<p>&#8220;These cuts will have an undoubted impact on all frontline council services, including care services to the vulnerable,&#8221; they said in the letter, published in The Times. &#8220;Rather than assist the country&#8217;s recovery by making savings to the public in a way that can protect local economies and the front line, the cuts are structured in such a way that they will do the opposite.&#8221;</p>
<p>In the letter, which lays bare the depth of frustration felt by a highly influential section of the Lib Dems, the signatories claimed that local government was playing its part in tackling the country&#8217;s deficit and advancing the Coalition&#8217;s aim of the Big Society. And they accused Mr Pickles of being &#8220;unwilling to lead the change that&#8217;s so desperately needed&#8221;.</p>
<p>They continued: &#8220;Local government has made efficiency savings of 3% in each of the past eight years &#8211; in stark contrast to the runaway spending of central government under the previous administration. We&#8217;ve also been planning for further saving since the true state of the economy became apparent six months ago. What has been delivered is a difficult cuts package across all government departments but clearly the most severe is to local government.&#8221;</p>
<p>It was also claimed that harsh cuts to the local government settlement in the coming financial year means councils do not have enough time to re-engineer services on a lower-cost base or ease staff cuts without forces redundancies.</p>
<p>The council leaders called for direct discussions with Mr Pickles, rather than &#8220;continue with the gunboat diplomacy&#8221; they were being forced to take.</p>
<p>The letter comes as divisions in the party were also under the spotlight over the Government&#8217;s handling of the banks, after Lord Oakeshott quit as the Lib Dems&#8217; Treasury spokesman in the Lords.</p>
<p>Shadow local government secretary Caroline Flint said the Lib Dem councillors were still &#8220;complicit&#8221; in the Government&#8217;s cuts. &#8220;This letter is too little, too late and comes the day after Liberal Democrat MPs joined their Tory colleagues in voting for a deeply unfair local government settlement,&#8221; she said.</p>
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