Sir – The Talking Oxfordshire public meetings in Banbury and Oxford were filled to capacity with people desperate to voice concerns about proposed cuts to our public services by the county council.

I attended to represent the 1,100+ members of the Oxon School Bus Action Group, but I was also emphatically not going to be fighting our corner against others representing other vulnerable groups, such as children’s centres or elderly care, and I made this point in the meeting to council leader Ian Hudspeth.

He kicked off this series of meetings by asking us to consider what services we could live without and in doing so, has created a false competition between the most vulnerable in our communities.

Our group exists because enough people believe that cuts to school bus services are wrong because they threaten the safety of children, make a mockery of the council’s own school admissions policies, are damaging to the environment and have a disproportionately negative effect on children from rural communities.

That is not to say that many of us do not also believe in the importance of other services, for example, the crucial role that children’s centres play in supporting children and parents when they are at their most vulnerable. The reality is harsh.

The council has a £60m black hole in its finances over the next four years, but let us stand together to fight the assumption that cuts to services for children or the elderly are the only solution.

Don’t let the council leadership ‘divide and rule’. Let’s challenge them instead to find other ways out of this mess, such as finding the missing millions tied up in Icelandic banks or perhaps even dipping into the estimated £300m council reserves.

Sue Moon, Campaign co-ordinator, Oxon School Bus Action Group, Alkerton