A SENIOR county councillor is calling on the Chancellor to give long-term fairer funding to large rural counties such as North Yorkshire in this week’s Budget.

Council leader Carl Les said North Yorkshire was a ‘high performing, low spending council praised for having an innovative can-do culture’ but he was concerned that overall the needs of rural areas were given low priority.

He said the authority continued to protect the frontline and was developing as a commercial council that could generate its own income. But he warned: “Without fairer long-term funding we face very hard choices ahead.”

A spokeswoman said that with the prospect of austerity continuing through to 2022, the funding handicap faced by rural areas was exacerbating pressures on services.

She said people in North Yorkshire paid almost twice as much council tax in relative terms as those in urban and London boroughs such as Westminster and Camden and received less Government funding, and yet costs tended to be higher.

“The council will therefore continue to push for a fairer government funding deal particularly given the higher numbers of older people; and the higher costs of delivering services in a large rural county with sparse populations,” she said.