LAST month York residents received their council tax bills, complete with two glossy booklets explaining the inflation-busting increase.

One of these reported that City of York Council "has been able to maintain high levels of expenditure on frontline services". The other, assessing the council's "best value" delivery, gives the social services department five "thumbs up" out of six on performance trends.

All very laudable. But ask Karima Hallett how she rates the council's performance and she would give it a definite thumbs down.

So would the 400 other disabled York residents who are losing their subsidised cleaning service because of council cutbacks.

Karima is 60. She suffers from severe asthma, narrowed airways, heart disease and angina.

These conditions are so debilitating that she has no energy to dust or use a vacuum cleaner. Karima pays £6.70 a week for someone to do her cleaning, quite an expense for a woman living on a pension and disabled allowance. The council pays the same amount.

But not any longer. Social services are ending the subsidy because of "severe financial pressures".

This is not an inconvenience for Karima. It could force her out of her home. Any accumulation of dust could bring on a serious asthma attack.

Jim Crook, the council's director of community services, contrasts the cleaning subsidy with "other vital care services". But to residents like Karima the cleaning is vital - for her health and peace of mind.

Most people would consider it to be the sort of frontline service the council is supposedly committed to protecting. It is certainly more frontline than, say, lap top computers or special political advisors for councillors.

The cutback also flies in the face of the council's policy, restated in the best value document, to allow "the elderly and disabled to live as independently as possible".

Again, this Labour council is hitting York's most vulnerable residents - at a time when the Labour Government is making health care its number one priority.

Councillors must think again.

Updated: 10:53 Friday, April 19, 2002