To respond to Nishma Shah’s letter “Shouldn’t savings be in-house first?”, Your Views, October 16) the Labour administration running Harrow Borough Council fully agrees and will always make in-house savings first in order to try and protect frontline services that residents rely on.

In the Take Part consultation we said that cutting the cost of running the council was already being undertaken and will always be our first priority to meet the £75million shortfall in budgets being imposed by the Conservative Government on Harrow Council and our residents. The consequence of that 53 per cent cut to our budget over the next four years, on top of the £62m cut over the past four years, will mean that we will have no other choice than to stop some frontline services.

Harrow is a low-cost, high-performing council and over the past four years we have removed tiers of management cutting costs cut by up to 40 per cent in some directorates, while we are making every effort to save administrative costs by sharing services with other councils, renegotiating contracts, as well as cutting down on agency and consultancy costs wherever possible.

Already I can hear readers asking about the chief executive decision.

It will be the responsibility of the new chief executive to make sure that Harrow can successfully bid for and receive the millions of pounds worth of redevelopment money to build desperately needed affordable housing in Harrow, amongst other developments to regenerate our borough.

The new chief executive will also lead a back-office review to cut management posts, which in itself will more than pay for their salary, even before the regeneration money is factored in.

Put quite simply, in the five months since Labour has been running the council, our actions have repeatedly shown that making in-house savings will always be our first priority before considering stopping services.

Councillor Graham Henson

Corporate resources portfolio holder Harrow Borough Council