• SARAH Hayward may be happy that, under her leadership, the Labour group running Camden has done its best to resist the massive Tory cuts to local government funding: over 40 per cent reductions in the past four years alone (Shock as Town Hall leader quits top job, April 6).

Unfortunately, though, all we see out here in the real world is a disastrous mess, which Labour gets blamed for of course!

Massive sales of Camden assets, cuts to community services of all types, library sell-offs and closures, removal of vital support services such as the Netherwood Dementia Centre, and deep reductions in rubbish collection now littering the whole of Camden, and then Camden’s appalling planners doing deal after deal with greedy developers, allowing them to ram up buildings with few or no affordable flats and no benefits to our community at all.

And all of this is due to Labour trying to meet ridiculous cuts by central government as Britain is run into the ground by the Tories and spirals off to nowhere under the Brexit stupidity they engendered.

Of course, councils have to be run responsibly, but when will Labour-run councils resist the impossible pressures from this penny-pinching government: when there is nothing left to sell, close or stop?

At present, virtually all major towns and cities in the UK are controlled by Labour, so why don’t the leaders of these councils get together and tell the Tories that these deep cuts can only be made at the expense of deep, massively damaging, and long-lasting cost to our communities, from our youngest children and on to the older generation whose numbers and needs have been growing for the last 20 or more years?

We are a rich country. We do not need to penny-pinch at this absurd level – though after Brexit the picture might change. And then what will the Tories cut?

DAVID REED
Eton Avenue, NW3