A PROPOSAL to cut £10,000 from the tourism budget in West Devon by staffing tourist information centres with students and volunteers stunned borough councillors, who strongly rejected the move last week.

Members of the borough council's community services committee said it was very sad to consider cutting funding for a wealth creation area — in 2010 tourism was worth £120-million to West Devon.

Cllr Bill Cann said: 'Taking £10,000 from the budget and relying on students and volunteers saddens me.

'I cannot believe it when we have £120-million coming into the area from tourism. We should be doing everything we can to help tourism.

'I can quite see why people are going to Cornwall if this is the approach we are going to take.'

Cllr Robin Musgrave said he was 'profoundly unhappy' and would be voting against the proposal.

Devon County Council had already 'done away' with the 'Visit Devon' kiosks at all mainline train stations in London, said Cllr Terry Pearce and this was a retrograde step in his opinion.

'Our tourism officer has done an excellent job in creating ways of generating income but we need to be very careful for the future otherwise people will not come to this area.

'Other counties are really pushing themselves — look at the money that is being used to promote tourism in Yorkshire — whereas Devon is doing nothing.'

But Cllr Robert Oxborough, chairman of the community services committee, said it was not a case of reducing the service but changing the way it was delivered.

He said: 'The cost of running TICs in house is quite high with the budget constraints we have. Staffing is an area where it is possible to reduce the costs but not adjust the level of service, just how we deliver it.'

Tourism officer Nadine Trout said that over the past two years the TIC service had achieved a 30% revenue budget saving (£28,000) through reduced staffing levels, fine tuning opening times and refining retail operations.

She said there was still potential to achieve more through further reduction of staff costs, increased sales revenue and improved partnership working and other innovative approaches.

Councillors agreed to support an action to increase income but did not accept the cuts.