CUTS have hit the region’s town halls nine times harder than wealthy parts of the South, a new analysis shows – despite the North facing much higher care bills.

The study highlights the areas where people suffer most from poor physical and mental health, disability and early death, imposing huge extra costs on local councils.

The worst-hit fifth of 325 authorities includes no fewer than ten North-East areas, a list headed by Middlesbrough which is ranked fourth for “health deprivation and disability”.

Not far behind are Newcastle (13th), Hartlepool (14th), Gateshead (17th), Darlington (20th), Redcar and Cleveland (21st), Sunderland (25th) and County Durham (28th), followed by Stockton-on-Tees (51st) and South Tyneside (65th).

On average, those ten councils have lost £213.04 of their overall ‘spending power’ for every resident since 2010, according to finance chiefs at Newcastle City Council.

Yet, the average loss in the ten areas with the fewest sick and disabled people, and much lower care costs, is calculated at just £23.19 per head – more than nine times less.

Incredibly, spending power has actually risen at one authority, Elmbridge, in Surrey (up £8.14 per head) - while it has plummeted in Middlesbrough (down £289.02).

The gulf is seen as crucial because social care is the biggest financial burden for cash-strapped councils, which are now also responsible for public health.

Recently, the charity Age UK warned that older people have been left “high and dry” by council cutbacks to help with washing and dressing, to day care places and meals on wheels services.

Hilary Benn, Labour’s local government spokesman, condemned the much-bigger cuts in areas with the biggest ill-health and disability burdens as “deeply irresponsible and unfair”.

And he said: “The A&E crisis in our NHS, driven in part by insufficient social care provision where it is needed, shows that the Tories can’t be trusted with vitally important health and social care services.”

Councils hit by the biggest cuts are already known to have slashed spending on adult social care by 12.7 per cent on average – against just 1.2 per cent in more protected authorities.

But Kris Hopkins, the local government minister, said “We have been fair to all parts of the country – rural and urban, shire and city, north and south, with deprived areas continuing to receive the highest government grants.”

Labour has promised a new “fairer formula” for distributing local authority grants, but has yet to give details, or say when this would be introduced.

The ‘spending power’ measure bundles together grants, council tax, business rates and the New Homes Bonus, but is widely criticised for disguising the true scale of the pain.

Newcastle’s finance department calculated the changes since the 2010 general election, after the Government refused to produce official figures.