THE row over the funding of vital local services has intensified with ministers accused of imposing an “unmanageable crisis” on Glasgow City Council.

The leadership of the council has appealed to First Minister Nicola Sturgeon for an urgent meeting amid claims new formulae for distributing cash to local authorities will see its grant cut by a further £18million.

It says it now faces a financial blackhole of £121m in the next two financial years , which will force the authority to make “impossible budget cuts”. The authority said previously it needed to find an additional £100m “just to keep the lights on” and predicts 3000 jobs going.

All councils will find out what they have received at the end of November, with Cosla, the umbrella body representing the majority of Scottish local government, expecting winners and losers.

However, the Government has said Scotland would face “significant further austerity” in the coming years, with Glasgow using recently updated indicators for funding to predict the settlement it will receive.

In what is also a clear attempt to make the funding of core local services such as education and care an issue for next May’s Holyrood election, where Ms Sturgeon will be seeking re-elected as MSP for Glasgow Southside, the First Minister is accused of “piling their (Scottish Government’s) own cuts on top of the cuts from (Chancellor George) Osborne in Westminster”.

Leader Frank McAveety said: “We are simply not able to meet such draconian financial demands whilst maintaining basic and essential services.

“The Scottish Government cannot blame these cuts on the homeless in Glasgow, the elderly in care homes in Glasgow, or those suffering mental health issues in Glasgow on the Tories. These are Nicola’s cuts. No ifs no buts. £18m of them.”

A Scottish Government spokeswoman said: "The later than expected 2015 UK Spending Review publication means we will not know what Scotland’s block grant is until late November, although it is clear we face significant further austerity over the coming years. Scottish Ministers will publish spending plans following the UK Spending Review.”

It was revealed earlier this year, using the Government’s own figures, how Scotland’s councils faced a funding gap of over £1billion in the next two years, although some within the sector believe it will be at least double this.

The knock-on will be the loss of the thousands of posts across the country, as well as scaling back of frontline services, as the impact of Westminster’s austerity agenda increasingly hits Scotland’s budgets.

According to Glasgow, recent changes in funding formulae have led to predict “with some certainty” that additional cuts will be imposed on Glasgow.

It said alterations agreed by the Settlement and Distribution Group (SDG), which includes representatives from the Scottish Government, would have an impact of £17.9m.

These include a loss of £2.5m from the grant it receives for school non-teaching staff, a further £7.2m from care home fees funding, £1.6m from mental health community care and a reduction to its cash for rough-sleeping programmes.

In his letter to the First Minister, Mr McAveety said: “I have considered for some time that given your clear commitment to tackling poverty and inequality that it may actually be the case that you have not been made aware of the extent of the crisis likely to engulf Glasgow.

“I am extremely keen to work with you to try to seek some mitigation of these threats and what they will mean for the poorest and most vulnerable people of the city.”

The Government spokeswoman added: “Local government finance settlements have been maintained over the period 2012-16, with extra money for new responsibilities and, as a result, the total settlement in 2015-16 now amounts to over £10.85bn.

“Glasgow City Council receives its fair share of this total sum which amounts to over £1,422m this year, and the third highest revenue allocation per head of all mainland councils in 2015-16.”

On Saturday, it emerged that charities are bracing themselves for potentially devastating cuts to the budget of the Big Lottery Fund, which could mean £30million is taken from the sector in Scotland to help mitigate savings applied to arts and sport.

The UK Government is understood to be considering cutting

40 per cent or more from the amount of lottery money that is distributed to charities via the Big Lottery Fund (BLF) and using it instead to effectively compensate arts and sports bodies for planned cuts to the budget of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

Sources claimed been told it wanted to remove £320m a year from fund.