DO you think Oxfordshire County Council has a good record of delivering services, despite cuts?

Anyone who fought against the council’s closure of 44 children’s centres across the county just three years ago might well disagree for a start.

Yet that was the message from some councillors yesterday as the authority’s leaders signed off on its draft plan to ‘restart and recover’ after the coronavirus pandemic.

The stark truth is that, after years of Government cuts to their budgets, our councils are all starting this recovery from a bleak position indeed.

The city council warned in April that the cost to all six councils in Oxfordshire from this virus could be £100 million.

What’s more, we haven’t even started to see the effect: so far our local councils have been able to use their savings, redirect some of their budgets and make use of Government handouts as they desperately try to help the thousands of individuals, community groups and businesses pummelled by this virus.

But those Government grants are not going to keep on coming, and our councils will quickly run out of spare cash.

Oxford City Council announced on Monday that it was simply having to put all of its major capital projects – including rebuilding Bullingdon Community Centre and East Oxford Community Centre – on hold indefinitely.

Now it is the county council starting to work out how it can possibly deal with its £64 million black hole.

Just a reminder, this is the authority in charge of education, social care, road and highways, libraries, waste and recycling, birth and death registration, and museums in our county.

In short, unless the Government decides to just chuck us £64m, not all of these services will be able to get the same money that they have been getting.

As for which services will get the worst cuts – place your bets now.