Austerity deaths were foreseeable and foreseen | Letters

Readers respond to a report revealing the highly predicable consequences of savage public service cuts over many years, and the effects of widening inequality

You report on a study by the University of York into the first five years of the coalition government's age of austerity" (Austerity in England linked to more than 50,000 extra deaths in five years, 14 October). The real scandal is that the results were in general foreseeable, and nothing was done nationally to mitigate them.

At a local level, the London borough of Lewisham decided to theme its annual public health report for 2011-12 on the effects of the economic downturn and austerity on the health of its population.