So the Government’s policy on the financing of local government services is coming to its logical conclusion, ie bankruptcy, as witnessed in North­ampto­nshire.

The current policy is not a sustainable model, unless you agree with the premise that its intention is to starve local authorities of cash and force them into selling council assets in order to pay for services; a transaction that can only happen once.

Once they are in a position whereby they can no longer provide services, the covert intention of the Government will be revealed and will mean the disposal of the responsibility to provide public services by selling them off to the private sector which, on recent experience, will not be as accountable, or challengeable, as to the quality of services its provides, neatly sidestepping and weakening local democracy in one go.

The reason this is happening was underlined last week with the headline that RBS –?one of the ‘big’ banks – had made a profit for the first time since it was lent £45bn by the Government to stop it going bankrupt.

It was decided that that debt, incurred by the private sector through some very dubious practices, should be paid for by the public sector by diverting money away from the financing of public services.

Martin Broadbent

Glendale Terrace, Totnes