The leader of a council which slashed all funding for children's services at a local disability charity has branded the charity "utterly despicable" for refusing to use up its reserves to maintain the same level of provision.

Last month West Berkshire Council announced £137,000 of cuts to children's services at West Berkshire Mencap.

When the charity said it might have to cut services as a result, council leader Gordon Lundie said it should use its own reserves to continue the same level of provision, and also accused the charity and its chief executive of “cynically using disabled children for their own political needs”, according to a report in local newspaper Newbury Today.

The council leader had said that he found it “difficult to believe that a charity with £800,000 cash in the bank would have to close services” and told it to fundraise to make up the difference.

But Leila Ferguson, the charity's chief executive, defended her decision, saying using up reserves to maintain services “would put us in the same place as Kids Company”.

Ferguson told Civil Society News that the charity received a letter with “no prelude to it” at the beginning of the month that West Berkshire Council was giving the charity its statutory six months’ notice, terminating its funding of £137,000 for its children’s services and after school clubs.

Ferguson said that this notice “came as a huge shock” and that without the funding West Berkshire Mencap would only be able to provide services for adults, with the exception of one weekly club.

She said that as a result 11 permanent staff would lose their jobs, as well as many volunteer positions recruited from local schools and colleges.

She said that they have waiting lists of teenagers who want to volunteer with the charity, which would be lost if the cuts take place.

The learning disability support charity has said it is going to fight the decision in every way it can, and that it will be setting up a petition against the cuts.

Lundie said that by doing this, the charity is “saying to parents that rather than managing their finances effectively, they will cut services while continuing to stash money away, which I find utterly despicable."

West Berkshire Mencap had an income of £1.9m in the year in year ending June 2014.

West Berkshire Council were approached for comment, but had not responded by the time of publication.