The Harrow Labour group have defended the budget after the Conservative group accused it of being “slapdash and erratic.”

The budget, which was released last month, contains 47 projects, amongst which will spend £3million on adult services, and put an extra £740,000 into tackling homelessness linked to the recession. They will also use £1.1m to meet the increased cost of sending waste to landfill, and a new “innovative” way of running children centres will save £800,000 whilst keeping them open.

It also plans to freeze council tax from April.

But Councillor Susan Hall, leader of the Conservative group, slammed it for being a “vintage” budget.

She said: “Labours budget is all over the place; it is a slapdash and erratic budget that chips away at services without changing them for the better. The problem with this is Labour will leave the council with services so badly cut that they will no longer function properly.”

She also argued that what looked like a “fairly minor transformation” of saving £100,000 from respite care for Children with Disabilities in 2014-15 would actually have a negative impact on people who benefit from the charity.

She said: “It seems like a fairly minor transformation, but in fact there’s nothing transformative about this saving. It’s just cutting money for vulnerable children and trying to word it in the blandest way possible.”

But Councillor Bill Stephenson, leader of Harrow council, defended the budget.

He said: “The Tories continually attack us when we make savings but never say what they would do instead. During the whole budget debate I think only one suggestion was made, which had already been looked at and been rejected.

“Far from being a slapdash budget, it is carefully crafted to make a further £19 million in savings, to add to the £31 million savings made last year protecting front line services, and enhancing them.”

He also expressed his concern for the way the Tories left Thursday’s council tax meeting in “total disarray.”

He said: “They attempted to walk out from the meeting but half of them refused to obey their whip – and remained, quite properly, in the Council Chamber to complete the meeting. One wonders whether all this wild rhetoric is to disguise not only a lack of any real ideas, but also to divert people from learning about yet more splits in the Tory Group.”