A LABOUR Government has been a nightmare for Dorset Council according to a senior Lib Dem councillor.

Finance brief holder Cllr Simon Clifford says Labour haven't quite declared war on Dorset and other rural areas… but says its policies and strategies have been divisive, pitting urban areas against rural.

Dorset MPs will get their chance to hear the county's views on Government funding this Friday when a group of councillors meet with the county's MPs in Westminster.

Cllr Clifford's comments came during a debate on the budget for the next financial year which will see £14.4million of cuts with the council tax rising by 5 per cent.

The Chickerell councillor says the Labour government has cut £5million in grants to Dorset Council for 2025-26 and fails to acknowledge that being a rural county with a high percentage of older people come with higher costs.

He said the council will need to both lose jobs and spend a set a record budget of £416million from April, mainly to meet growing demand for adult and children's services.

The Cabinet meeting heard that almost all car parking charges will go up with the introduction of a flat-rate overnight fee of £2.50… money needed to pay for the maintenance of the county's roads.

"The new Labour Government is setting a direction of travel in its decisions and policies that I personally can only describe as worrying for Dorset… they're not exactly declaring war on rural councils like ours, as they appear to look to increase funding for urban councils, but we are perhaps seeing the first warning shots of this battle – urban vs rural – it's an uncomfortable place to find ourselves, competing with other councils for the same pot of money.

"We will continue to lobby and protest … but it doesn't look promising," he told Tuesday evening's Cabinet meeting.

Cllr Clifford said councillors needed to get in front of Labour Ministers to get them to move away from the urban-rural split: "you have to look at the whole piece, and work out what is fair funding for the services you need to provide," he said.

The portfolio holder said that the Lib Dem council, in power since May, had not shied away from difficult decisions and over the coming years needed to create "a smaller, more IT-driven, more customer focused, more productive council for the years to come."