• I WRITE in response to your article (Teenagers treated for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder as knife cases rise, March 29).

The current situation is truly alarming and Camden has found substantial funding to address this issue – but at the expense of other discretionary services.

Camden used to have a full-time designated head of youth services: Mary Durkin, in 2001-2003 (when I was the executive member responsible for education) with a sizeable youth budget and several free-standing youth clubs further supported by an excellent outreach team and a youth offending team, the latter praised by Rosa Bramley.

Although there is still a youth service budget (projected £17.3million on young people) you point out that massive cuts in government funding of £18million next year alone have led to constraints on spending by Camden Council, making it difficult to maintain council services at anything like the level we have been used to in the past.

The rise in council tax for 20018-2019 will hardly cover the social services budget let alone provide for anything else.

The government’s measly £5million to repair Britain’s collapsing roads is totally inadequate, while government cuts in school funding is leading to dire reductions in staffing.

Fifty-two per cent of council funding comes directly from the government, residents’ council tax accounts for only 12 per cent – so any increase will produce modest results.

It is true that the council now receives a small proportion of the “business rate” (14 per cent of income-tied spend), rather short of Cameron’s prom­ise of restoring the business rate.

When Camden received the full business rate (before the poll tax was introduced in 1990), it was a comparatively wealthy borough. Of the total current income of the council, nearly 50 per cent (£9 out of every £20) has to be spent according to govern­ment rules.

There is desperate pressure on the budget, reduced by £169m from 2011-19, with a further projected reduction of £40m by 2022. The so-called “efficiencies” proposed by Camden Conservatives will go nowhere remotely near plugging the loss of funding overall.

Camden services have always compared well with neighbouring authorities, but these latest cuts pose a massive threat to services in our community.

DEIRDRE KRYMER
Labour Councillor 1994-2006