Members of Slough Borough Council have added their signatures to a national petition, ahead of what could be the largest annual reduction in local government funding in almost a decade.

The ‘Breaking Point’ campaign, started by a group of Labour councillors who say they want to bring attention to the ‘breath-taking levels of cuts that austerity has made to local council budgets’, has been signed by over 5,000 local councillors in just two weeks following its launch.

Now Slough councillors have joined the campaign, amid fears of an unsustainable future for the town.

The campaign specifically calls for the government to “use the budget to reverse next year’s planned £1.3bn cut to council budgets, immediately invest £2bn in children’s services and £2bn in adult social care and pledge to use the spending review to restore council funding to 2010 levels over the next four years.”

Adding their names to the petition were Slough Borough Council leader James Swindlehurst, alongside all Slough Labour councillors and members of the Slough Labour group, who admitted that due to cuts, they have been forced to adopt a spending model that may cease to be sustainable under increased pressure.

Cllr Swindlehurst said: “The Labour Group signed up because of demand-led pressures on our adult and children’s social care budgets. The Group supports the campaign ‘request’ for further funding commitments for those which are at £2 billion each.

“The Council has been using profits from our development vehicle (Slough Urban Renewal) to subsidise our budget for the past two years, so we have not had to cut services, but this may not be sustainable every year going forward and with the government failing to commit ASC funding beyond 2019, it is right we press them to set out their forward plans/commitments to deal with service demand.”

Fears that a further £1.3bn is to be slashed from local government fuding have seen the Local Government Association warn that main grant funding from central government could be cut by 36 per cent in 2019/20 and that as many as 168 councils will not receive any of it.

However, as recently as October 3, Treasury minister Liz Truss claimed the government would not be making further cuts and stated that the government was simply providing ‘more flexibility’ for councils to raise money themselves, causing Labour’s local government spokesman, Andrew Gwynnee, to label her ‘either totally innumerate or completely inept’.

The petition will be delivered to Downing Street ahead of the budget announcement on Monday, October 29.