An opposition leader has slammed the timing of the budget cuts as a "disgrace" following the announcement last week.

Waltham Forest Conservative leader councillor Matt Davis accused the council's leader Chris Robbins and his cabinet of "gambling residents' money and services" following last week's announcement of £13.76m cuts for 2016.

A budget meeting was held ahead of the general election in March where the level of cuts were not announced, but were revealed at a special council meeting on July 22.

Conservative councillor Alan Siggers, questioned the timing of the announcement and said his party could not support the cuts as the report did not contain specific details as to the exact services which will be affected.

Now, councillor Davis has suggested the Labour party were either gambling on a different outcome to the general election or were hiding the cuts prior to May 7.

He said: "We are pleased to see that the Labour party are finally following the recommendations that we have been making for many years, such as cutting the amount of money spent on consultants and reducing the amount of taxpayers’ money given to trade unions.

"These are cuts that will have very little impact on services to our residents and should have been done years ago.

"We are concerned, however, by the timing of these decisions.

"There is no decent explanation as to why this could not have been done at the council meeting in March.

"They claimed that this meeting was needed because of the recent budget, but the budget did not contain any details on local government funding so there is as yet no change to our financial circumstances for this year.

"The only possible reasons for the delay in making these cuts are that the Labour party was either gambling on a different outcome to the general election or was not willing to show the full scale of their cuts so soon before an election.

"Either way it is a disgrace that the Labour party should be willing to put party political advantage before our residents’ services in this way."

Services for children, the elderly and disabled are among the worst affected.

From next April, 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.

Cllr Robbins admitted the budget announcement was due to the election outcome.

"The reason why we are here is because we have a Conservative government," he said.

"As far at this meeting goes, it is good governance.

"We're going to be open, upfront and tell people what is going on.

"The whole part of redefining Waltham Forest was a rolling programme so we could keep in front of the austerity measures."