I SEARCHED in vain for any reference on last week's Letters Page to festivals - either to extra measures we are putting in place to encourage new festivals or to the council's financial position.

Cabinet increased the funding available for community groups to put on festivals. This builds on the success of the community led Catch the Wind kite festival in Morecambe.

Cabinet also established a wholly new Festivals Innovation Fund to encourage partnership with the private sector to put on tourism related events. We see this as the key to future provision.

The private sector should share the risk in putting on events that are potentially of benefit to their businesses and should share in the decisions about what to put on and when. It's a challenge I believe some will respond to.

But finance is important too and the council has to make savings if it is to keep council tax rises down. That is why we introduced a Medium Term Financial Strategy (MTFS) that looks forward over a three year period and has a clear target of keeping council tax rises down to fiveper cent or less. If we achieve this, it will mean the lowest percentage increases for six years.

When we debated the target last month, the Morecambe Bay Independent leadership voted against it and the Tories abstained. We don't know what council tax increases they would find acceptable but we now know that they want a bigger budget.

Labour and our Liberal Democrat and Green coalition partners, are committed to the MTFS targets.

Cabinet members from all three groups meet weekly to try to find economies and ways of carrying out the council's business more efficiently and effectively.

We are carrying out the line by line examination of the budget but it's not all about cuts.

In the last year we have turned round the council's performance in paying benefits on time and almost doubled the recycling rate. We could not have done this without investments in key services.

So what has this got to do with festivals? Simply that the MTFS applies to everything. There are no exceptions.

If we want to improve services and keep council tax rises down, difficult decisions have to be faced. If we can encourage new festivals in partnership with business I believe we can deliver enjoyable and worthwhile festivals in a different way. But pretending the budget doesn't matter is the primrose path to high taxes and poor services. It's not a path I intend to lead the council down.

Cllr Ian Barker Leader, Lancaster City Council.