THE future of a range of core community facilities in Porlock - under threat from public spending cuts - will come under the spotlight at a crisis meeting in the village.

With county and district council cutbacks beginning to bite, parish councillors have called an extraordinary meeting on May 18 to discuss the major impact of a looming financial crisis.

Villagers will be faced with the choice of shouldering significant Council Tax increases next year - around a £20 rise on a Band D property - or giving parish councillors a mandate to withdraw financial support from facilities ranging from the village hall to the visitor centre.

Porlock's library is one of 11 in the county facing closure as a result of Somerset County Council's decision to withdraw funding under a £34 million package of cuts across all services.

A decision on whether it could become a community run library - not linked to the county network - has yet to be taken locally.

But parish council clerk Christine Fitzgerald said the county's decision would have a huge impact on the whole community.

Not only would a hugely valued core service be lost, but £7,500 of costs - rent and rates for the library building - would have to be absorbed by the community.

Mrs Fitzgerald said this would come on top of £11,000 of lost county and district council grants over recent years which the community had so far managed to absorb through cost saving and fundraising schemes.

"However, there comes a point where the community's capacity to keep finding ways to work round problems runs out and we now face a series of very difficult decisions," she said.

Parish council chairman Cllr Alan Wright said the funding gap represented around 17 per cent of the current £43,000 precept and this could not be met without major consequences.

In addition, the district council had already indicated that it could withdraw all rate relief on a series of village charities and organisations next year, including the village hall, visitor centre and Dovery Manor Museum.

"This means even more money has to be found just to stand still," said Cllr Wright.

"As if this isn't bad enough, the district council is planning to transfer the responsibilities to the parish for a range of other services, including toilets and street cleaning with, we suspect, no transfer of funding.

"The policy of both councils appears to be one of abandoning rural communities, retreating to core services they are obliged to provide and concentrating on the big population centres.

"The message to parishes is that you are on your own - if you need something, then you pay for it.

"They are penalising parishes further by transferring fixed costs off their books onto ours when we have no capacity to absorb the costs.

"I find this immoral and it contributes nothing to reducing public sector costs."

Cllr Wright said Porlock was facing a huge dilemma which had to be urgently resolved and the special meeting was being called to ensure everyone understood the problems.

"We want some guidance on how people want the parish council to proceed.

"Does the community want us to balance the books by withdrawing parish council support from all village facilities or are they prepared to see Council Tax increases to protect the core of our community.

"This is a decision on which the community as a whole must guide the parish council."

The meeting will be held in the village hall and will get underway at 7.30pm.

Villagers will be asked to complete a questionnaire, the results of which will help the parish council make its decisions.

Cllr Wright said: "This meeting is critical in helping us decide what's important to Porlock and where we go in future - protect what we have or shrink back to something very different."