THE Vale of Glamorgan council will experience a real-terms cut in the amount of money they receive from the Welsh Government after plans for a 0.88 per cent cut were given the go-ahead.

AMs voted to approve the Welsh Government’s Local Government Settlement, the amount of money handed from Cardiff Bay to each council in Wales, for the 2017 to 2018 financial year, on Tuesday.

Vale council leader, councillor Neil Moore said: “In monetary terms, the final settlement from Welsh Government for 2017/18 for the Vale is a reduction of £1.3million.

“In terms of a percentage, this represents a reduction of 0.88 per cent.”

Cllr Moore added: ““The council already has to make substantial savings in 2017 to 18. This reduced budget will have to be taken into account in our future budget-planning.”

Speaking in the Senedd, Wales’ finance and local government secretary Mark Drakeford said he believed the amounts being handed out were “a fair outcome for local authorities”.

“Now is the time to plan ahead purposely and unstintingly for those decisions which need to be made,” he said.

The Labour minister said it was important councils worked to ensure services were being delivered as efficiently as possible, and he added that the Welsh Government was working alongside authorities to ensure this happened.

“In the end it is for electors to make sure they hold local authorities to account,” he said.

But Welsh Conservative’s local government spokeswoman Janet Finch-Saunders described it as “yet another difficult settlement for Welsh councils”.

“Council budgets have been devastated right across Wales, particularly in rural areas” she said. “And that bill has been simply been passed straight on to the taxpayer.”