AS North-East councils desperately try to identify savings of up to 40 per cent as a result of this week’s Government Spending Review, there is a very real fear that sport and leisure services will bear the brunt of the cuts.

Despite successive Governments extolling sport’s health and social benefits, local authorities are not legally obliged to provide sporting services.

As a result, councils looking to protect frontline services such as social service provision, care for the vulnerable and elderly will be searching for cuts that will prove less controversial.

Durham County Council is expected to have to make savings of more than £90m over the next four years, while the figure for North Yorkshire is £69m.

Both bodies are likely to target leisure centres, swimming pools and playing fields, placing the likes of the Freeman’s Quay Leisure Centre, Chester-le-Street Leisure Centre and Northallerton Leisure Complex at risk.

Durham County Council leader, Simon Henig, said: “This is approaching the worst case scenario we were planning for.

“We have 17 leisure centres now, and sadly it is highly unlikely we will have 17 in 2015. It is also highly likely that the improvements we have been able to make in providing sport will now be dismantled.

“In Westminster I often worry all this seems like just numbers, but we will see the effect it will have on people’s lives and health, at a time when our major health challenge is obesity.”

Wednesday’s Spending Review also featured a £160m reduction to the schools PE and sport budget, and the abolition of specialist sports schools.

At an elite level, there will be a 30 per cent cut to Sport England and UK Sport, the bodies that fund coaching and elite athletes’ living expenses, but some of this shortfall will be made up by an increase in the amount of lottery funding flowing to sport.

NO manager within football accepts a position expecting to be in the same role for life, but Sir Alex Ferguson has had a decent crack at it since taking over at Old Trafford in 1986.

It is safe to assume Ferguson has had better weeks, with the debate about Wayne Rooney’s future enough to give anyone sleepless nights.

But, on Monday, the press pack at Ewood Park were given an insight into the power the United boss still pulls, when he appeared to have control over one of his former players.

Having already spoken to a number of television and radio stations, Steve Bruce, the Sunderland boss, was due to deliver his post-match assessment of the goalless draw with Blackburn to the written press when he was invited for a drink with Ferguson.

Bruce obeyed the invitation as if it was an order, and his assistant, Eric Black, was dispatched to face the media.

STEVEN Istead is remembered in the North-East as a midfield hard man thanks to his spells at Hartlepool United, Gateshead and Consett.

But he wasn’t looking quite so hard in only a pinny on the front of Mansfield’s match programme for last week’s draw with Darlington.

Istead, who became Pools’ youngest-ever goalscorer when he netted at Hillsborough aged 17, was posing to promote healthy eating and living.

The ploy worked, if only because anyone seeing the programme would have been put off their half-time pie.

SUNDERLAND’S A Love Supreme publishing stable have released their latest product.

“Ganterbury Tales” is co-authored by Paul Dobson and Derek Poskett, who sadly passed away during the book’s production.

It is described as “a ridiculously detailed recollection of the halcyon days when watching the Lads away from home was usually a step into the unknown”. The book costs £10 and is available from the ALS Shop opposite the Stadium of Light, via www.alove- supreme.com, or in Waterstones and WH Smith.