I’m sure Fred Leplat (‘Do Tories have a mandate?’, Your Views, June 12) will be thrilled to learn how wildly mistaken he is with his claim that the council bought two ceremonial Daimlers for £120,000.

Quite where he got this fanciful idea I do not know. This Conservative administration has in fact saved money by purchasing one secondhand Jaguar at the end of its lease and by getting rid of the second car entirely. This is in fact just one example of the many savings we have made across the organisation, including a recent £90,000 per year cut to the cost of councillor allowances.

Where Mr Leplat’s implications are correct is in that there are substantial funding pressures facing local government. This applies in Barnet, where Conservative and Labour councillors recently agreed the need to find a further £72m in budget savings by 2020. Where he is wrong, however, is in failing to recognise that Barnet has an excellent record of providing both value for money to the local taxpayer and high quality services to those who need them.

Cllr Richard Cornelius Con/Totteridge ward, Leader of Barnet Borough Council Heroes Return 2 Grants available for war veterans This year marks the 70th anniversary of the Normandy landings and we are rightly paying tribute to those brave men and women who served our nation at that daunting moment in our history.

Many veterans may not, however, be aware that there is still an opportunity to mark the occasion with a visit. Through your pages can I draw the attention of Second World War veterans to the Heroes Return programme, which grants funding for visits to the places where they served.

Heroes Return 2, supported by a Big Lottery Fund grant, offers Second World War veterans grants from between £165 and £8,000 towards travel and accommodation expenses to enable them, their spouse and carers to make trips back to places across the world where they served, or to make a commemorative visit in the UK.

To date, awards of more than £28million have been made to more than 57,000 people.

Details can be found at www.biglotteryfund.org/heroesreturn or by calling the helpline on 0845 0000 121. As we remember their service with gratitude, I hope some of our local veterans might consider taking advantage of this fund.

Mike Freer

MP for Finchley and Golders Green