MADAM – Your newspaper recently quite rightly expressed concerns about the serious problems at the A&E at our local hospitals.

I would now like to call on you to raise public awareness about the county council’s current plan to cut services to vulnerable adults and older people, which is certain to make this problem much worse in the coming year.

GCC’s current budget consultation about how much it plans to spend on services in 2015/16 is incomprehensible to the average council tax payer, but the devil is in the detail of the council’s own reports.

These confirm that it plans to reduce the amount it spends on services to vulnerable adults by over more than £5million next year, despite it already anticipating over-spending on these same services by more than £3million this year.

To the council’s credit, there have been no council tax rises for the last five years, but we now need political leadership from local politicians to avoid creating further serious problems for some of the most vulnerable in society.

All it would take to avoid this happening would be for 50p per week to be added to the average council tax band D property, as this would raise the required £5million.

I’m sure local people would support such an approach if this was set out clearly in truly transparent consultation process.

The council will make a final decision on February 18, so there is still time for you and your readers to let our councillors know that this will be a cut too far and does not reflect the views of Stroud residents.

Nick Berry

Elcombe