Prime Minister David Cameron told local authorities yesterday not to “do the easy thing” by cutting budgets for voluntary bodies in their communities.

Cameron told his audience at Prime Minister’s questions that instead councils should look at core costs and “how you can do more for less”.

His comments came in response to Labour MP for Bolton West Julie Hilling who advised that Bolton Community and Voluntary Services had already lost £89,000 of grants this year for small voluntary groups. She asked what the Prime Minister would do to save these groups, if he believed in the Big Society.

Cameron responded that while the government had to make spending cuts, "... we should say to every single council in the country, ‘When it comes to looking at and trimming your budgets, don’t do the easy thing, which is to cut money to the voluntary bodies and organisations working in our communities. Look at your core costs. Look at how you can do more for less. Look at the value for money you get from working with the voluntary sector.’ The honourable lady should take that message to her local authority. That is the message that I would take to her local authority, and everyone should try to work in that direction.”

The Charities Aid Foundation, however, have called for  Cameron's actions to speak as loud as his words, asking that the government "insist that spending decisions of individual departments consider as a priority the need to strengthen civil society and take account of the long-term impact the work of the voluntary sector has on local people and communities," said CAF head of policy Hannah Terry.

"Despite pressure to slice budgets now, local authorities need to be brave enough to look at radical and innovative ways of engaging with the sector in order to achieve better outcomes, together with long-term savings to the public purse. Short-term cuts to the sector will be a false economy for society as a whole," she added.