LEADERS of Cumbria’s cash-strapped county council have issued a warning in the wake of George Osborne’s budget today.

Deputy leader Patricia Bell said the public should be under 'no illusion' - the cuts would accelerate.

“It’s going to be impossible to protect front line services as we know them,” said Cllr Bell, who is the cabinet member for finance. “The council will be open for business in the future but it will not look the same.”

The council has already identified or delivered spending cuts of £178m but has to find an unidentified projected sum of £55m by 2018/19 – a figure first predicted at £33m earlier this year.

“Our best estimate before today was that we would have to reduce our spending by at least £80m over the next three years,” said Cllr Bell.

“We have plans for where some of those reductions will be made, but we’re still £55m short.

“To put that in context, the gap is more than three times the budget for our fire and rescue service and over ten times the budget of our library service.

“So this will mean continuing to put all our services under the microscope to work out how we can protect our children, support older people and maintain our roads. Improving efficiency remains important; but the savings we can make here won’t come close to what we need.”

Leader of the council Stewart Young said more job losses than the anticipated 1,800 at the organisation were ‘inevitable’.

And he added: said: “People take it (warnings) with a pinch of salt but we’d like to try and get across that we’re not kidding that it’s unchartered territory and "It's hard to see how we’re going to make the savings we’re faced with."

“I’m not convinced the savings won’t go on further than 2018/19.”

Meanwhile fears of further cuts to national parks has sparked campaigners to call on the government to ‘properly value’ the important benefits to communities that the landscape has.

The Lake District National Park Authority has had its government grant cut by 38 per cent in real terms since 2010, with a fall from £7.3 million to £4.5 million.

Richard Leafe told the Gazette he was anticipating a reduction although precise figures wouldn’t be known until the autumn statement.

And though there are no changes this year, he added the authority would continue to seek alternative sources of income with a mixture of selling assets no longer needed and by maximising parking charges.

BUDGET: 8 KEY POINTS

* A further £37 billion spending cuts planned by 2020

* NHS to receive an extra £8 billion by 2020

* Personal tax allowance to rise to £11,000 next year, and to £12,500 by 2020

* £30m set aside for a new body called Transport for North to improve integrated transport

* New compulsory living wage of £9 an hour by 2020

* Cost to government of funding free TV licences for over 75s will be transferred to the BBC between 2018 and 2021

* Loans to replace maintenance grants for university students from lower income families

* Child tax credit to be restricted to two children for those born after April 2017