ALMOST £3 million is likely to be slashed from funding to help people in Bradford lose weight and quit smoking or booze, the Telegraph & Argus can reveal.

The Government is poised to cut each local council’s public health budget by 7.8 per cent immediately, in the first round of George Osborne’s post-election cuts.

The move will swipe cash for services such as smoking cessation classes, obesity clinics, school nurses and drug and alcohol treatments.

And it will go ahead despite warnings of an obesity epidemic and evidence that tackling the stubborn causes of ill-health can cut the long-term cost to the health service.

The Chancellor announced a £200m “in-year” cut to public health spending earlier this month, but did not set out where the pain would fall.

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Now the T&A has been told that three options will be set out, possibly as early as this week – including a 7.8 per cent “across-the-board” cut.

That would slash about £2.8m from Bradford, which was promised an allocation of £35.3m in 2015-16.

The likely cut was described as “shocking” by Councillor Ralph Berry, the executive member for health and social care at Labour-run Bradford Council.

He added: “Effective projects to improve health are being cut with little notice, when we are using all our public health funding to tackle the serious health challenges we face.”

And the British Medical Association (BMA) accused the Government of “crude cost-cutting at the expense of the public’s health”.

Iain Kennedy, chairman of the BMA’s public health medicine committee, said: “A third of Britons are projected to be obese by 2030, 70 children a day are smoking their first cigarettes, and the total cost of alcohol harm has been estimated as £20bn.

“Public health services are more vital than ever in delivering preventive care and tackling issues including rising obesity and alcohol, tobacco and drug-related harm.”

Two other options would see either steeper cuts for councils deemed to be historically overfunded, or the £200m taken from local authorities yet to spend the money.

The first could hit Bradford harder, because poorer areas are considered overfunded by the Department of Health (DH).

The “fair shares formula” would switch cash to areas with higher-cost pensioners, but was shelved in the last parliament, after protests.

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Council chiefs fear big problems ahead where contracts have been signed with organisations to deliver programmes – but money must now be clawed back.

The £200m cut was part of £3bn immediate reductions announced by Mr Osborne after the election – just a slice of £30bn of cuts planned by 2018.

A DH spokesman said the consultation would start soon, adding: “We will be asking authorities for their views on the best way to make these reductions, to minimise disruption.”

Budgets for public health were transferred from the NHS to local authorities in 2013, when ministers argued – ironically - that the funds had often been “raided” by the NHS.