PENSIONERS and disabled people could be forced to cut back on their home care services when increases are introduced by the City of York Council, it was claimed today.

The rise of up to 10 per cent in home care charges to a maximum of £10 an hour, as well a 10p rise in meals on wheels, and increases in day care, domestic support and laundry charges, will be introduced in April after councillors gave them the go-ahead last night.

York groups representing those affected said today they were bracing themselves for floods of calls about the changes and warned many people would stop using the services.

The council say the move was forced on them by Government spending limits and Coun Bob Fletcher, chairman of the Social Services committee, said the council would rather raise charges than cut services.

Plans outlining the changes were originally drawn up in December, and would have increased home care costs by as much as 15 per cent for some people.

After a two-month consultation period, Coun Fletcher proposed last night that increases should be limited to a 10 per cent maximum.

This would mean the rate for home care would range from £3.50 for up to two hours of care at the bottom end of the scale, to charges of £10 an hour for the more well-off pensioners.

He said the number of people using the service would be monitored.

The Liberal Democrat group on the committee said the increase should be no more than three per cent.

Coun Harry Briggs said: "Some of the people who are not on Income Support are already facing perhaps a 12 per cent rise in council tax - to ask them to bear the burden of more is totally unreasonable."

And Conservative member, Coun Andrew Armstrong said: "Surely we will be charging ourselves out of business.

"Who's going to pay £10 per hour? People will vote with their feet and our budget could be adversely affected - we could be poorer at the end of the day."

Lilian Parkinson, co-ordinator of the Disability Rights and Resource Centre in York, told the committee that community care charges should be a priority and were not an option for people, unlike leisure services charges.

Afterwards she said that although the increases were not as big as they might have been many people would reduce their level of service.

"If they don't withdraw from the service, they'll start switching their heating off to try and afford it," she said.

And James Player, from Age Concern, said: "Meals went up by 21 per cent last year, and will go up by another six per cent this year while pensions are going up by just 3.6 per cent.

"People will start prioritising. Bob Fletcher said the only alternative to increasing prices was to reduce services but this is doing it anyway because people will not use as many services."

Dawn O'Rooke, from the Carers' Project, said all those who used the services should be aware that if they found they really could not afford the charges, or that they had been put into the wrong band of charging for home care, they could appeal to the council against them on an individual basis.

Advice is available from the Carers' Project on 655945, from Age Concern on 627995 and from the Disability Rights and Resource Centre on 638467.

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