Sir – I take issue with the selective use of statistics by Keith Mitchell. While it is true management and support costs are being reduced by £273,000, that is only a partial picture. The library service is being cut by 25 per cent and of that 25 per cent only 13.78 per cent is in the back office (the £273,000), 86.22 per cent of the cuts are being made to the frontline.

This is either by forcing volunteers to provide the statutory service they have already paid for themselves, or by reducing staff numbers in the larger libraries through the roll-out of self-service machines.

There is also an internal recharge on IT, HR, admin etc within Oxfordshire County Council of over £3m which, according to their own submissions to CIPFA, has barely been cut at all.

Keith is, as always, muddying the waters to distract from the fact that the reductions in the frontline library service are actually increasing the proportionate size of the back office. With the internal recharge and the front-line reductions, the back office of the library service may well end up costing more than the frontline.

This is against common sense and the policy of his own party. I am sure he will respond with more partial facts and spurious emotive arguments to obfuscate the issue.

Trevor Craig, Ascott-under-Wychwood