COUNCIL leader Steve Galloway has told York: "We are entering a period of belt tightening." Residents, meanwhile, are left trying to recall the last period of belt slackening.

The city's spending has been seriously confined by the Government grant for as long as anyone can remember. While it is right that public money is allocated with due restraint, it is important that the funding system is fair. Palpably, in York, it is not.

Coun Galloway, like his Labour predecessor Coun Rod Hills, points out that this city gets a bad deal from Whitehall. Even Labour MP Hugh Bayley supported many of the proposals in the council leader's Fair Grant For York campaign.

The city spends less per head of population that any other council in the country. Quite why the Treasury fails to fund York properly is unclear. Any perception that this is a wealthy tourist city should be dispelled by the Government's own figures, which place the Westfield ward in Acomb among the most deprived ten per cent in the country.

True, there are problems of the city council's own making. The car parking fiasco has seen an important source of revenue fail to hit targets.

However, the Government has loaded more and more on to local authorities, including higher teachers' pay, responsibility for licensing and stiff recycling targets. Even considering the above inflation grants of recent years, there can be no doubt that much of York's cash shortfall is of Whitehall's making.

Updated: 09:22 Wednesday, October 05, 2005