Bradford Council has millions of pounds sitting in reserves, in a bid to protect the district from swingeing cuts in years to come.

The Council has £129.2 million in its reserves – £74.3 million which has been allocated for specific purposes, £31.4 million which is set aside for schools and £23.5 million which is unallocated.

At a meeting of the Council’s Executive yesterday, Council leader David Green (Lab) said it was not sitting on reserves for no reason, but that the purpose was to protect the district from the worst of the public sector cuts expected in coming years.

He said: “It’s because we know that in the coming two years we are going to be facing in the region of £60 million worth of cuts.”

He said the more they could save now, the better protected Council services would be in the coming years.

The amount of money the Council holds in its reserves is £20.7 million less than a year ago.

It put £6.3 million of its reserve cash into its budget for 2012-13, used £13.1 million of the school reserves and spent the rest on a range of different projects.

The Council also recorded an underspend of up to £3 million in its budget for 2012-13, with a number of projects deferred until the next year.

It has identified £5.5 million of spending set aside in its 2012-13 budget which it can defer to 2013-14.

Coun Green said: “I would like to congratulate every member of staff within the Council who has helped deliver within budget in incredibly hard circumstances, when you consider the cuts we have been hammered with since 2010.”

Coun Green said while frontline services were being protected “as much as we can”, no organisation could withstand five years of such cuts and come out the other side providing all the services it had provided before.

He said: “What’s clear is that business as usual is not going to be an option, given the size of these cuts.

“What we are going to be looking to do is to do our best to ensure these essential services will be retained.”