Poorer UK areas that backed Tories face fresh funding cuts as cash switched to wealthy southern regions - Poorer areas that delivered Boris Johnson’s election triumph are facing fresh cuts to local services – as funds are switched to wealthy Southern shires instead.

Shadow local government minister Ann Coffey has told the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International TV Festival that those in southern England who backed the Tories have been blocked out of receiving vital funding aimed at ensuring they have a secure future.

Poverty doesn’t have to be “the big issue, of course” for those who voted for Theresa May, who spent more than ten years campaigning for local services to remain.

The criticism came after Deputy Prime Minister John Whittingdale yesterday announced that there would be £4.5bn of funding for disadvantaged areas in 2017-18, with extra money to be dispersed throughout the whole of the UK and Scotland.

Coffey told the Edinburgh TV Festival that the money was already in the pipeline but should not be dumped on struggling places like Bristol.

She said: “The truth is the money has already been directed there. The money was allocated to working-class areas. For years they have been told they didn’t have enough money but then the Conservatives came into power and they made it possible for those areas to receive it.”

After May said “children in deprived communities are more likely to feel targeted than other neighbourhoods, and supported by the same schools”, Coffey said: “We know there are many, many families who are housed in deprived areas because of their circumstances, who are struggling to keep up with school lessons, or if they are claiming benefit they often can’t access local services.

“They’re the ones who are at a greater risk of losing their housing, of not getting employment, they may not have a home, they may not have enough money to support themselves.”

She added: “There are families with children in that area, and not just those living in areas that were to benefit when the Conservatives were prime minister.”

Coffey said her analysis was based on “frequent and reassuring visits to deprived areas and positive reports from the charity Barnado’s”.

She said: “The biggest thing I’ve heard this summer was that there are people on the edges of English society, small, middle-class, if you will, middle class families, who are struggling to stay and avoid being targeted by housing benefit and the Government targets.

“And so when the Communities secretary say he wants to improve those children’s lives, it makes it much more important.”

Of May’s £4.5bn, Coffey said: “It could be better, it could be more, it could be much more.

“But it’s absolutely crucial to ensure those parts of society that want to see a better life can have it because the evidence shows they are the ones who get the best benefits.

“I’m suggesting to anyone – it doesn’t mean that those aren’t going to be a very important priority in the future for the Tories, I’m talking about those groups in deprived areas.”

She added: “There’s no doubt that the Conservatives under Theresa May, they’ve increased welfare spending and the Conservative budget was a total assault on the poorest members of our society, who believe they should be allocating half of the State’s money for a given group.”

Coffey told MediaGuardian that the Tories had also been frustrated by the fact that their policies had not supported poorer areas.

She said: “There was the sense that we were being held back because the mainstream parties were not doing enough in our funding allocation. So people voted for the Conservatives thinking that something had to be done.

“A lot of these disadvantaged areas did very well under the New Labour Government, but it looked and felt like their money was not being directed to those most in need.”

Asked whether the Conservatives should pull up the drawbridge over rich south of England, Coffey said: “I think for a government whose huge priority was always raising taxes, well that was it. It felt to me that the Tories were a very poor fit for providing those services to those most in need.

“We will see what happens in the coming years. It could well be some further struggles on the funding front.”