Civil society organisations threatened with disproportionate funding cuts from their local authority were thrown a lifeline today as Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles announced he was looking at statutory powers to enable such decisions to be challenged.

In a speech to the NCVO annual conference, Pickles (pictured) said councils must “resist any temptation to pull up the drawbridge on the voluntary sector and pass on disproportionate cuts”.

“Unless they’ve squeezed out every bit of waste, unless they are really sharing back office services, unless they’ve clamped down on senior pay, then they have no hiding place,” he said. “We have a reasonable expectation of how local authorities will conduct themselves.”

Pickles said the government had four expectations of how councils should behave towards their local CSOs. First, that they will not inflict bigger cuts to sector groups than they take on themselves; second, that they should have been consulting with their local sector from an early stage about the spectre of cuts and how these should be managed; third, that they should have given at least three months’ notice of a funding cut or alteration to a grant or contract, and lastly that they should use this three-month window to allow the affected groups to suggest other ways of providing the service.

If councils are not abiding by these “reasonable expectations”, Pickles said, “I’ll consider giving them statutory force.”

He intimated that the Localism Bill already making its way through Parliament would be the obvious vehicle for these new powers.

Asked whether such statutory powers might be applied to require those councils that have already made sweeping cuts to reconsider, Pickles said: “Absolutely. The use of the phrase ‘reasonable expectation’ is a deliberate one.”

Kevin Curley, chief executive of Navca, said the announcement was a “brilliant piece of news”.

He said Pickles was effectively advising CSOs to challenge unfair funding cuts in the courts.

Sir Stuart Etherington, chief executive of NCVO, described it as “a warning shot across the bow of local government”.

“The Secretary of State has made it clear that he expects those local authorities that have made disproportionate cuts to the sector to reconsider. In particular we welcome his commitment to consider giving statutory force to these expectations should local authorities fail to meet them.”

But Unite’s national officer for the not-for-profit sector, Rachael Maskell, said Pickles was "living in a fantasy world" if he thought this news would solve the problems facing the sector.

"The cuts to local groups are happening now and are very severe," she said. "Eric Pickles’ unreasonable funding settlement to councils has contributed to this crisis.

"The Chancellor, George Osborne needs to address the crisis facing the sector by the Budget on 23 March, otherwise many charities will go to the wall which will be the death knell of the Big Society."