CIVIC chiefs in Southampton fear some of the city's health services could "vanish" due to proposed Government funding cuts.

They are calling on the Government to rethink a potential £1.1m cut for the current year that could affect services helping residents stop smoking, deal with alcohol and drug problems and school nurses.

They are among the specialist services currently funded by the council's public health budget which also include weight management, GP health checks for people at "greatest risk", health visitors and sexual health and contraception services.

Labour council chiefs say they have to make £90m of savings in the next five years, having already shed £72m from the council's budget in the last three.

The Government is considering a £200m cut to public health budgets across the country that would affect services that have already been budgeted for in 2015/16.

If the same "one size fits all" criteria are applied to all councils it could see a £1.1m reduction in the city's public health budget.

The council has written to the Department of Health asking for a rethink and a lengthy letter sent by the council to ministers argues that the council's public health services are already under-funded.

It says that if the cuts go ahead "services such as smoking cessation, behaviour change, teenage pregnancy prevention, expansion of work to prevent domestic violence and improved alcohol services will all have to be cut back or put on hold".

Labour council leader Simon Letts said: "Effectively some services could vanish overnight.

"We've got contracts with people, a lot of services are at risk and cutting them will cost the NHS more in the long run.

"In-year cuts are morally wrong because these services are being taken away without any alternative.

"It's difficult to know whether they will have an impact on jobs but they could do."

His party colleague and council health chief Dave Shields has written to all of the city's MPs asking them to write to the Minister for Public Health, Jane Ellison, asking her to review the cut proposals.

In his email he tells them: "I worry that it will be increasingly difficult to protect public health and adult social care budgets (which account for a third of current council expenditure) and this, in turn, will have a significant impact on our already-overstretched NHS services in the city."

One of them, Conservative Southampton Itchen MP Royston Smith, said that he understood the need to make savings to bring down the deficit but said he was "concerned about a uniform cut across all local authorities".

He said: "As I have constantly pointed out, Southampton is geographically located in the prosperous south but its health inequalities and challenges are as difficult as many of the country's northern cities.

"Unless and until government understands this Southampton will continue to lag behind.

"I will be writing to Jane Ellison MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Public Health, to ask her to look at Southampton's circumstances and reject a 'one size fits all' solution."