The leader of Cambridgeshire County Council has made a plea to the Government for a fairer funding deal which he says would give this area an extra £15m funding.

Councillor Steve Count calls for the historic “unfair formula” to be corrected and asks residents to lobby their MPs to make sure this happens.

Cambridgeshire has joined forces with county councils across the UK who suffer from what Cllr Count calls ‘a broken formula.”

“The historic fairer funding formula is seriously undermining our ability to deliver services and means we are forced to tax our local residents to make up the difference,” he said.

“At the moment the funding formula has completely diverged from where it used to be, a fair funding formula, this has happened over many years and continues to further diverge from appropriate distribution of resources across the country today.

“We want the Government to correct a flaw in the national funding formula and are asking residents to speak to their MPs to ensure they look at this. Please support our campaign, together we can make our voices heard.”

Despite this county being the fastest growing in the UK, it ranks third from the bottom out of 27 shire counties in the funding it gets from government, he said.

Cambridgeshire gets an average of £292 per resident less than councils in London.

“Imagine how much more we’d have to spend in Cambridgeshire if counties were treated fairly against their urban counterparts”, Cllr Count said.

In Cambridgeshire, the services have come under substantial pressure in recent years, he added.

The number of Looked after Children (LAC) have increased by 50 per cent and there has been a 100 per cent increase in the number of children subject to a Child Protection Plan in the past four years.

Over the next five years, the number of older residents living in shire counties is set to rise at an annual average of two per cent, compared to the national average of 1.8 per cent.

• Cllr Count is asking people to support #Fairdeal4Cams on Twitter or Facebook where a support message can be posted on your behalf.