BOURNEMOUTH council’s leader has revealed that he was among a number of Conservative town hall bosses to fire off letters to the controversial Secretary of State for Local Government, Eric Pickles MP.

A recent freedom of information request by Sky News revealed that Conservative-led authorities across the country had written to Mr Pickles’ about funding and his contentious statements on council bureaucracy.

Cllr Peter Charon said he had written to Mr Pickles as well as raising concerns with him directly at a meeting at 10 Downing Street.

“I have no comment to make on Mr Pickles’ individual style. Everyone has their own personality.

“What I do have a problem with is that we were given a very clear steer by his department that while our settlement would come down by 28 per cent over four years, it would reduce by about 11 per cent in the first year.

“In our case, it was 15.2 per cent in one year. It’s been very heavily front-loaded,” he said.

Mr Charon said he had spoken to Mr Pickles about a 44 per cent cut to the council’s Supporting People grant, which he said was spent on some of Bournemouth’s most vulnerable people.

“I met Mr Pickles at 10 Downing Street a few days ago and expressed the council’s concerns face-to-face. I wrote to him the following day with a slew of documentation,” he said.

Cllr Elaine Atkinson, the leader of neighbouring Poole council, said she had not written to Mr Pickles, and added that her low funded authority had long experience of “doing more with less”.

Dorset County Council’s leader, Cllr Angus Campbell, said he had written to Mr Pickles over his department’s calculation of his authority’s “increased spending power”.

Mr Campbell said it was important that the relationship between local and central government was based on mutual respect.