Residents urged to use advice service or face cuts (From Gazette Series)

Wotton residents urged to use advice service or face cuts

2:54pm Thursday 22nd October 2009 in Gloucestershire news By Claire Marshall

WOTTON residents are being urged to use a local advice service or face seeing it severely reduced.

Following an article in the Gazette, which reported that Stroud District Council plans to cut down the weekly officer advice service in Wotton’s One Stop Shop, the council has delayed the decision until January next year.

Wotton Town Council has been told that if they can prove the service is well used during that time the district council will reconsider its proposal to make it fortnightly.

Councillors are now urging local residents to ‘use it or lose it’.

"We have only two months to prove the town needs the service, it is a case of use or it lose it," said town mayor Paul Smith.

The council officer service is a drop in session every Tuesday morning, from 9am – 12.30pm, where people can talk to a representative about anything related to a district council service and it is particularly used by council tenants.

With the new Choice Based Lettings system that has just come into force, which is a new way of allocating social housing, tenants who need help using the internet based system can visit in these times to talk to the officer.

Anyone visiting the One Stop Shop at that time can also see a member of the Citizens Advice Bureau.

Last year the One Stop Shop as a whole had over 2,400 callers and there are a large selection of leaflets and information from bus timetables and education prospectuses to tourist information available.