Liberal Democrat County Councillors have condemned a decision by Surrey County Council to award a £400,000 grant to an art gallery which has £38million of funds and an income of £1.2million a year.

The Watts Gallery in Compton, Guildford, was awarded the money despite the County Council’s Chief Finance Officer warning that the County Council’s financial position is extremely serious, that the proposed expenditure has not been budgeted for, and that the gallery was already “financially viable”.

We believe that at a time of huge spending cuts in Surrey, it is quite incredible that the priority of the Conservatives is to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on an art gallery which appears to be in good financial health and well supported.

This grant contrasts with other recent decisions taken by the Conservative administration at County Hall such as the £3.7million cut to Housing Related Support – a budget cut which affects some of the most vulnerable people in our community.

As a result of this contrast, we ask, “How on earth can the Leader of the Council look residents of sheltered housing, who are about to lose some of their warden schemes, in the face and tell them that this is a sensible use of public money?

This decision should be reversed as quickly as possible, with the money re-invested in council services to the benefit of Surrey residents.

We support the arts but we also support sheltered housing for vulnerable people even more and furthermore we suspect GF Watts would too.