A council leader has promised to tackle £13.76m cuts for 2016 "head on" and has warned there will be further cutbacks to come in Waltham Forest. 

Services for children, the elderly and disabled are among the worst affected and are to be cut by millions as part of the savings outlined for next year. 

The savings were agreed by the council's Labour party at a Town Hall meeting last night (July 22) in Forest Road, Walthamstow. 

But the opposition party remained defiant with all seven Conservative councillors present abstaining on the grounds of lack of detail in the budget report.

From April next year, the council intends to cut the adult social care budget by £3.68m, children's services by £1.76m, public health by £2m, public realm by £2m and in-house operations by £1.49m. 

Other six figure cuts are to made to the growth and housing, finance, culture and communities and service design budgets.  

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Volunteers, relatives and service users fill the upper deck of the public gallery 

Leader of the council Chris Robbins gave a frank speech, promising not to hide away from austerity and accused the government's programme as "philosophical". 

"They want small government and want individuals to be able to scramble around on their own without appropriate support," he said.

"It is quite obvious now that there will be shining knight in armour on the white charge and coming to our rescue- that is not going to happen.   

"Our principles remain the same and the most important one, is that we confront these cuts and savings head on. 

"We don't hide from them, we don't avoid them and we deal with them.

"This is absolutely necessary for us to do so. To bank all of these issues would only put our crisis further and further away and would be ten times as bad if we didn't face them now.

"The need for difficult decisions will increase as time goes by, they will get worse and the sorry situation we're confronted with tonight, will continue because it gets harder and harder to implement the reductions."    

In addition to the agreed £13.76m cuts, the council has to find an additional £22m in savings before 2019. 

Among those affected is the The Limes Community & Children's Centre in Walthamstow whose council funding has been withdrawn for 2016, and therefore prompted an emotional speech by service user's 15-year-old Qasim Ahmed and Linden Sims, 12. 

Councillor Mark Rusling, responsible for children and young people, said the charity's funding cut was part of a series of decisions taken two years ago when its £5m Early Years Grant was scrapped "overnight" by central government.  

He said: "Because of the scale of the cuts over the last four or five years, we are down to statutory children's services only.

"I don't doubt at all the pretty disastrous impact of these decisions taken in Westminster on the families in Waltham Forest. 

Speaking on behalf of the Waltham Forest Conservative party, cllr Alan Siggers questioned the depth of the report. 

He said: "I will point out that you still publish Waltham Forest News, which is £500,000 a year and is actually illegal.

"So if you want to find some money, you know where it is. 

"We will not be supporting this (report) simply because there is not enough detail. 

"If you want us to agree to something and want us to support you, you've got to give us the information to make a decision, without that, we cannot help you."    

Responding to the criticism, councillor Robbins said Conservative leader Matt Davis gave the report a "big thumbs up" and "endorsed" the report at last week's budget scrutiny committee.