A CALLINGTON councillor has urged Cornwall Council to re-think the cutting of face-to-face services across the Duchy following the removal of staff at the former Callington One Stop Shop and their replacement with computers.

Andrew Long, Cornwall Councillor for Callington and town councillor, was speaking after the Communities Portfolio Advisory Committee (PAC) discussed and approved the current update on the progress of the 40% cuts to library and One Stop Shop budgets recently.

He said: ‘Once again Callington has been used as a guinea-pig as the council desperately tries to find these savage cuts and as a result, we have lost the face-to-face public access to council services that were hosted at the town council offices.’

He said the service had been replaced with two computer terminals. 

‘Whilst I applaud the town council for its progressive work in ensuring that we at least have some presence left in the town, this service will be no help to the 51 per cent of the over 60s who do not have access to the internet and do not know how to use it to access services.

‘It is a sad reality that once again we will be seeing double taxing of our residents who will pay for the general service while not getting easy access to people locally.

‘We are now left with the reality that if a resident needs to speak to a council representative urgently, it will require two buses and a two-hour journey to the nearest manned information point. This is clearly unacceptable.

‘We are hearing that the council are heading for a £10-million underspend this year — surely some of that saving can be diverted to ensure we have a service that actually provides a decent service for all the residents of Cornwall.’

Cllr Long said Cornwall Council was working on a number of ‘devolution’ deals with town and parish councils which effectively meant transferring the cost of vital library and One Stop Shop services to parish and town councils in order to meet the targeted cuts imposed on the council by Westminster.

Callington Mayor Cllr Mark Smith said: ‘The reason it has gone this way is purely a financial decision by Cornwall Council. From Callington’s point of view, the fact that we have still got an information point as a means of contacting Cornwall Council is a good thing.  

‘It is a shame there will be no more face-to-face contact but most of the council services that were provided by the One Stop Shop are now online anyway so people can access it from home if they want. We are in an age where councils need to save money and the soft option is to cut services and put them online. I’m not happy with it but we still have a service and now we need to adapt to it and embrace what we’ve still got.’

Cllr Smith said people can access the Cornwall Council information point in the town hall where there will be two computers with access to the internet.

Former One Stop Shop staff will still be on hand to guide people through the new system for the time being and in the near future they will be replaced by volunteers.