GWYNEDD Council’s leader is disappointed with “further bad news” for the local authority.

Gwynedd was one of the hardest-hit counties in last week’s budget announcement.

The county council will receive £166.9m from the Welsh Government in 2016/17, nearly two per cent less (1.7 per cent) than it received for the current financial term.

Public Services Minister Leighton Andrews laid out his plans for the forthcoming year which saw Gwynedd receive a more severe budget cut than most other local authorities in Wales.

Nationally the 22 local authorities in Wales will receive more than £4bn, which inclu­des £35m to continue the Welsh Government’s commitment to prioritise schools funding.

An extra £21m is included for social services across Wales.

However, Gwynedd Council leader councillor Dyfed Edwards was not impressed.

He said: “[Last week’s] settlement represents further bad news for local government in Wales at a time when pressures on our local services are continuing to increase.

“In Gwynedd, we have been anticipating this further bad news and carefully preparing for the service cuts that are by now unfortunately unavoidable if we are to maintain those services that are most important to the people of Gwynedd.

“Only last week, the Gwynedd Challenge public consultation exercise drew to a close.

“In this consultation, we explained to local people that the council faces a potential budget shortfall of approximately £50m in the period up to 2017/18 and that actual service cuts of around £7m will more than likely be needed over the next two years as part of our efforts to bridge the gap between the cost of delivering local services and the money we receive from the government to do this.

“This settlement merely confirms the assu­mptions we made regarding the grant dec­rease.

“Well over 2,000 people took part in this consultation exercise, and their responses will now be collated and analysed before a report on the results is published in the new year so that the feedback can be carefully considered by all councillors before the council decides which services we will unfortunately have no option but to cut from April 2016 onwards.”

Speaking of the new Welsh Budget, Mr Andr­ews said the cuts could have been worse.

“I propose to set local government revenue funding at £4.099bn, a decrease of 1.4 per cent or £57m compared to 2015/16,” he said.

“This is a considerably better settlement than local government was expecting and is good news for local services in Wales. We have protected the funding for local government in Wales over the course of this Asse­mbly term.

“As a consequence of UK Government decisions since 2010/11, spending on local services in England has decreased by around 10 per cent in cash terms, while in Wales it has incr­eased by 2.5 per cent.

“In setting council tax levels for 2016/17, I urge local authorities to think seriously about the funding challenges they face and to balance this with a consideration of the financial burden on households.”