Barnet council’s ‘Graph of Doom’ now looks prophetic

In 2011, no one believed councils would be left to swallow the rising cost of social care unaided. But after funding cuts of 40%, their plight looks increasingly bleak

• Angela Rayner: Tories' council fund is cynical pre-election sticking plaster
• What are the cost pressures facing English councils?
• Stuck without it': Woking elderly residents face losing key transport

In 2011, two senior council managers in north London put together a PowerPoint graph that they felt might help kick off a useful discussion with colleagues about the future of local government. What would happen, they asked, if town hall funding flatlined, while demographic pressures continued to rise steadily?

The answer, they suggested, lay in what became known as the Barnet Graph of Doom. It indicated that the council would, within 20 years, expend all its available resources on meeting the needs for adult social care and children's services. There would be simply be no cash left for libraries, parks, leisure centres or even bins.