TWO Labour councillors attacked the government at a meeting called to decide council tax levels for 1999/2000.

Coun Don Rishton said local government was in a never-ending cycle of decline because Labour had continued Conservative policies of not putting enough money into the coffers of town halls.

And former council leader and current deputy mayor, Coun Peter Greenwood, said the government was still restricting the amount councils could spend, even though they had taken away the capping on budgets, introduced by the Conservative governments in the 1980s.

The Labour group set the council tax rise for the people of Blackburn and Darwen for 1999/2000 at 4.8 per cent - as proposed a month ago. And council house rent will rise by three per cent.

A total of £3.7million will be cut from budgets so that the tax rise can be kept to 4.8 per cent with £1million of the cuts coming from service reviews which will take place during the coming financial year.

Liberal Democrat finance spokesman Coun David Foster criticised the service reviews policy, saying they lacked detail and were vague. He also said £200,000 should be cut from members' allowances and put into mainstream budgets while the leader of the Liberal Democrats, Coun Paul Browne, questioned why other councillors needed mobile phones and computers at home.

Conservatives said council tax levels in the borough could actually be reduced if a survey of whether all the building the council runs were needed or not.

Finance spokesman Coun Micheal Lee also called for more efficiency savings and more services to be contracted out to private companies, rather than being run from the town hall.

A consultation process which the council went through with the people of the borough ended with some minor alterations to original budget proposals, including extra cash to assist local businesses and environmental schemes.

Conservative deputy leader Coun John Williams criticised the consultation, saying only a very small number of people replied.

But Labour finance spokesman Coun Gail Barton rejected the Tory attack and said the council had managed to save money by only making "cosmetic" reductions to budgets and protecting front line services.

She said the council had achieved what many thought would be impossible during its first year as a unitary authority by securing education action zone status, receiving a Prime Ministerial visit and being given the money to set up a youth offending pilot scheme.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.