NEARLY half the services provided by West Somerset Advice Bureau are under threat following Somerset County Council’s decision to axe its grant, forcing it to ask Minehead Town Council for financial support.

The chairman of the Minehead-based bureau, district councillor Rollo Clifford, told the town council’s finance committee that the news that the county council grant would be scrapped was “like having two torpedoes fired straight in front of a battleship”.

He said the bureau was working hard to make up the deficit but “this is such a serious issue - it’s an area in which we all need to work together”.

The committee was told that the loss of the £60,000 county grant meant 40 per cent of the bureau’s work was at risk and the staff budget would have to be reduced by £45,000.

Bureau manager Susan Clowes said: “We’re desperate. These are unprecedented really tough times and I ask the town council to help us.”

The committee deferred the application to give the council time to meet members of the organisation, gather more information and look for ways to move things forward.

Cllr Clifford said the bureau was an independent charity, set up in 1976 and run by volunteers and paid staff. Some funding came from traditional donors and some from fundraising events.

He said that although West Somerset Council covered the cost of a paid member of staff, “that’s 20 hours of somebody’s time but they probably do 30 hours because the only people that are important to us are the people out there on the street, the clients who come through our door.

“They don’t understand cuts, they don’t understand our budgets, they are actually at the bottom of life’s cycle and they need some help.”

Cllr Clifford said more volunteers were urgently needed but they had to be trained and that involved costs.

Regarding paid staff, Cllr Clifford explained that employment rules meant paid staff had to be given three months’ notice: “Probably the lowest point in my professional life is that we had to give some people redundancy notices on Christmas Eve.”

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