How has the council ended up allowing an expenditure of £2.5 million on children’s centres for children under school age.

No wonder the services are considered for cuts.

If 30 of the users of these services can form a protest group against the cuts at short notice, appoint a leader, have a meeting and report back to The Argus then they must be capable of doing some things themselves, like run baby and toddler groups and stay and play groups without the council needing to do it for them.

Some of the ‘cuts’ seem to be covered easily.

How can you propose to cut funding to voluntary groups? Presumably the volunteers are not paid.

Why can’t the unemployed people in the Brighton Unemployment Centre, who are by definition not working, arrange to run some of the ‘services’ themselves.

Parents will now be encouraged to travel to a centre for baby and toddler check-ups instead of having home visits.

You would think any parent who was mobile would think it a parental duty to get their children to a centre for a check up.

The reason cuts are happening is that the governments, past and present, have borrowed vast sums of money which they could not fund and so the country is up to its eyeballs in debt and going under.

If the 30 users who attended the initial protest group provided £80,000 each they could fund the children’s centres themselves.

If they do not want to borrow the money they might consider it is around this sum that every adult in the UK owes as their part of the national debt.

Perhaps it is time that the people who meet in the groups could take on some of the council’s parenting/play duties themselves to ensure continuity of contact with other people and children they have gotten to know.

J Holmes, Coombe Rise, Saltdean