THE consultation on public service cuts in York has degenerated into a "farce", opposition councillors have said.

David Scott, leader of the Labour group on City of York Council, said failure to deliver information leaflets to many households was "unacceptable".

As previously reported in The Press, the council launched a city-wide consultation to ask residents for help in identifying cuts to plug a £1 million shortfall in the 2008/09 budget.

But many properties have not received the leaflets, and council officers are now in urgent discussions with the distributors.

Coun Scott raised the issue at a council meeting, and said today: "We are now confronted with households in various parts of the city not being given a say.

"That is unacceptable and we have pushed to see the consultation period extended so that everyone has their say.

"I have received complaints that residents in Clifton have not received their consultation document. I also know that residents in Heworth, Holgate and Dringhouses and Woodthorpe have not received theirs.

"Thousands of residents could be excluded from the consultation. When I checked, there weren't even copies of the consultation leaflet in the council reception. This consultation is becoming just another Liberal Democrat farce."

Concerns surfaced after a number of residents contacted councillors to say they had not received the leaflet, or it had arrived in insufficient time for it to be posted back and included. In addition, about half of Labour's 18 councillors living in the city said they had not received the leaflet.

Heworth councillor Ruth Potter said: "All the information points to this not being a few isolated examples, but a failure of more significant proportion in the way the consultation has been organised."

Coun Scott agreed there would never be 100 per cent delivery success, but said: "In this case, we are not talking about a few properties being missed off.

"It is far worse than that and I trust the council will be holding back paying the bill for the outside service provider that should have carried out this job more professionally."

Council leader Steve Galloway told councillors: "It is very easy to take a few cases and say leaflets have not been delivered."

Labour say that, after discovering some homes had been missed out, the council sent out a van on Friday to deliver leaflets to Labour councillors.

Coun Scott said: "The whole episode goes from bad to worse which I didn't think was possible after what we heard from residents last week.

"On Friday, fellow councillors witnessed a man in a white van delivering the budget consultation leaflet to their homes, many of whom had already received the leaflet.

"Those that saw the leaflet arrive said the van then sped off without delivering to any other properties in their streets.

"This is an utter waste of money and those responsible for organising the delivery have completely missed the point of our complaints.

"Although every councillor living in York would expect to be consulted, we complained on behalf of residents, in order that they would receive the consultation leaflet and be able to have their say."

A council spokeswoman, said: "We recognise that there have been some problems with the distribution of the leaflets and we apologise to anyone who has not received the consultation document. We are in urgent discussions with the distributors and have extended the deadline of the consultation until January 31 to allow everyone the opportunity to respond.

"We would recommend that anyone who has not received a leaflet completes the consultation online at www.york.gov.uk"

About 5,000 responses have been submitted so far.