BRACKNELL Forest Council has accepted government plans to cut the amount of funding it receives from Westminster by more than £9.5m over the next four years.

The amount of money received by the council in the form of Local Government Revenue Support Grants, used to fund everything from leisure services to the arts, will be drastically reduced every year until 2020 council documents reveal.

After first learning of 'unprecedented' cuts to local council budgets just days before Christmas in 2015, the council has now accepted further annual cuts and outlined the areas where savings will be made between 2016 and 2020 in an 'Efficiency Plan'.

However, lead member for transformation Cllr Peter Heydon says the council is better off agreeing to the scheme laid out in the Final Local Government Finance Settlement, as further cuts would be unpredictable and perhaps harsher without a pre-agreed year-by-year plan.

He said: "The efficiency plan is not set in stone. It will undoubtedly change and the council will be flexible.

"Agreeing it is a condition of accepting the council settlement. It means the council has a robust and stable plan."

The council rushed to produce a balanced budget for 2016/17 earlier this year after the revenue support grant was cut to just over £11m.

It is due to receive just £7,081,000 from central government in 2017/18, which will be cut further to just £1,743,000 by the 2019/2020 financial year.

A transitional grant secured by council leader Paul Bettison will boost coffers for 2017/18 by £914,000, but there is no similar support in the following two years and the council will depend on cuts to services, council tax increases and money raised from business rates to help balance the books.

In a report to the council Cllr Bettison wrote: "The four year settlement represents the most severe financial challenge ever faced by this council. The four year settlement is, however, welcomed as it enables the council to plan ahead with more certainty than in the past. This efficiency plan sets out the scale of the financial challenge but demonstrates that the council has a realistic and robust plan to deliver balanced budgets over the medium term."

The government committed to provide a minimum allocation of Revenue Support Grant if councils accepted the four-year offer and produced an efficiency plan to demonstrate where savings would be made by October 14 this year.