Last week’s Autumn Statement was terrible for our NHS, local government and Woking in particular.

On Sunday, The Observer ran with the headline “Jeremy Hunt’s budget cuts spark fears of ‘existential threat’ to English councils”. This followed heavy criticism from even Conservatives across local government that the planned annual cut of 3.4% for five years for areas including council spending, announced by the Chancellor, could lead to even more local authorities going bankrupt.

My Lib Dem colleagues and I have been elected to rescue Woking Borough Council from effective bankruptcy following years of mismanagement and risky investment decisions by the former Conservative administration. We have started making difficult decisions to rescue Woking, but it will be a long road to recovery. In the meantime, I don’t want to see more local authorities go bankrupt like Woking, yet the Autumn Statement is likely to lead to exactly that.

I want the Government to properly fund key services and make them statutory. This would protect services such as meals on wheels to older and disabled people, support a local dial-a-ride service to get people out and about and provide swimming pools and leisure facilities to support health and wellbeing.

Instead of cutting council funding, it’s time for central government to commit to sustainable funding for local government. Councils need three-year financial settlements and agreements for better planning and, most of all, funding at levels that deliver the services people need without councils resorting to risky commercial investments to prop-up funding. It seems the Government is content with local health services crumbling after Wednesday’s statement failed to provide additional funding for health services.

Before the Autumn Statement, the Lib Dems had been calling for the Chancellor to invest in a robust NHS rescue plan as ever-growing treatment backlogs have stalled the economy, damaging both growth and quality of life.

These measures would have included reversing Conservative cuts to vital public health services in Woking and delivering 8,000 more GPs across the country to create 65 million more appointments every year.

The Lib Dems have warned that treatment backlogs are damaging economic growth. A poll commissioned by the party showed that one in seven people had taken a significant length of time off work whilst waiting for treatment on the NHS.

As well as ignoring the crisis in our health service, the Chancellor proposed tax changes that will not touch the sides after years of unfair tax hikes that Woking’s Conservative MP, Jonathan Lord, has consistently voted in favour of. This Conservative Government seems completely content to sit back and allow Woking’s local health services to crumble. They are either so out of touch they cannot see how many people are struggling to access healthcare, or they simply do not care.

The Autumn Statement was an opportunity to get people off NHS waiting lists and allow them to return to work so we can rescue our flatlining economy. Instead, we got empty promises, stale nonsense and a tax cut that’s not even a drop in the ocean compared to what people have already paid.