Councilor Tony Newman knows full well that the difficult decisions the new Conservative administration faces on the Council's budget have been inherited from his administration and are nothing to do with decisions taken since May (Tory tenure lead to loss of millions - 27 September). To put it politely, his letter is deliberately misleading.

Paragraph 14.5 of the paper he presented to Cabinet on 27 February stated that if the council increased council tax by about four per cent next year there would still be a budget gap' of £21.245 million - and that was before pressures from the spending departments were included. The actual figure we inherited was about £37 million.

Your readers may wonder how this can possibly be the case: let me give one example that helps to explain why it is. This year, the Labour Council used £6.2 million from the sale of the council's multi-storey car parks to fund services. They knew that money would not be available next year and that they would then have to cut spending by that amount.

There are plenty of other examples of this kind of hand-to-mouth approach to managing the authority's finances.

Coun Newman mentions two examples of how the new Conservative administration has lost money - the decision to refurbish, rather than rebuild, South Norwood Pool and the decision to keep open two care homes for the elderly.

In both cases, his letter is misleading and he knows it. The decision to refurbish South Norwood Pool will save the council money - £6 million this year and £500,000 in interest payments every year thereafter.

And if we had proceeded with Labour's planned closure of the two care homes, forcing vulnerable people to move in the process, the advice we received is that we would probably have been forced to reverse the decision by the courts and run up huge legal bills in the process.

Coun Newman should recognise that, not withstanding the achievements of his administration, they have left the council's finances in a very serious state and start making a constructive contribution to the debate about how we get out of this mess, instead of trying to mislead people.

Councillor Gavin Barwell Conservative, Coulsdon West