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When the government announced its first round of cuts to local councils, Liverpool was the most badly hit in England.

It lost £9.3M from so-called area based grants, money which was aimed specifically at helping poorer areas.

This meant that councils in richer areas lost nothing, something which Liverpool - and other councils in the North West - considers deeply unfair.

Further salt was rubbed into the financial wound, when Liverpool lost £350M from the Building Schools for the Future programme.

Theoretically if this financial trajectory continued, the council says it would be running a budget deficit of £120M in four years time.

But it has more than a hundred million in the bank and change is inevitable.

The new Labour administration blames the previous Liberal Democrat authority for failing to reform services. It has started to reduce the cost of its management team and is offering redundancy to corridors full of staff.

But the city has a very high percentage of public sector jobs and the council fears there could be much worse ahead in Wednesday's Spending Review.

But when I visited its near neighbour, Cheshire West and Chester Council, it all felt very different.

Cheshire West was only created last year when there was a shake-up of local government in the county.

The new administration moved swiftly to change the way it did business and offer better value for hard-pressed council taxpayers.

The most obvious sign of change is its building.

The historic County Hall has new owners. Councillors have given way to classrooms, as students from Chester University now fill the corridors.

The council has meanwhile moved to a modern, open plan building known simply
as HQ.

Its Conservative Leader, Mike Jones, sits next to his chief executive in the middle of a room. Other senior officers sit nearby.

The building is two thirds the size of County Hall, yet more people work there.

It means running costs are lower and, I'm told, decision making is quicker.

But the changes go much deeper than that.

1,100 posts have been closed including 30 senior managers. The council says it has managed to save £53M of which £14M has been put back into services.

Cheshire West and Chester has £20M in reserves.

The council is hoping that it will continue to make enough savings to keep ahead of the cuts demanded by central government.

Even so it is still nervously awaiting the Spending Review. Other councils, much more so.

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