The dramatic cuts to Barnet’s libraries and merging of three nursery schools (proposed at the time of writing) shouldn’t have come as a surprise.

Barnet officers had warned profusely of the ‘Barnet graph’, by which austerity pressures from central Government, together with rising statutory responsibility costs, would squeeze other services.

In the name of austerity, we have also lost hundreds of neighbourhood police, as well as police and fire stations.

And yet the Government still finds billions for new schemes and is intent on billions more for HS2 and HS3, attacked by an economics watchdog as ‘vanity projects’.

J Levy

Golders Gardens, Golders Green