More than 200 areas of public spending faced real-terms cuts in the first year of the coalition government, with departments having to find ?10bn in savings from services such as GP care, prisons and the rail network, an analysis by the Guardian shows. The survey highlights the challenge the government faces in implementing its austerity plan as major service cuts are offset by rising spending in other areas. George Osborne announced ?6.2bn of in-year cuts during his first year as chancellor, a more significant cut to budgets than had been proposed by the previous Labour administration, which was worried spending cuts might stifle growth. Details extracted from departmental accounts during the Guardian's annual data survey of government spending show that cuts far larger in total than this were required to offset spending on benefits and debt repayments, which soared during the economic downturn. Overall government spending actually increased year on year by ?22bn, a 0.3% increase after inflation is taken into account. Investment in infrastructure dropped markedly, with rail spending down 41% to ?2.9bn and road spending down 18% to ?3.8bn. These drops were largely a consequence of Labour's decision to bring forward infrastructure projects from 2010-11 to 2009-10 in an attempt to boost government spending during the recession. Despite an overall budget increase of 0.28%, areas of NHS spending including GP