A CITIZENS Advice Bureau will open its doors in Callington tomorrow, after the town rotary club stepped into reinstate the free advice service for residents.

The bureau will be open to all-comers in the town hall in New Road between 10am and 12 noon tomorrow, August 25, and every last Friday in the month over the coming year.

Bob Wade, President of Rotary Callington, said that if the service was successful over its 12-month trial, the branch would look at continuing it. The rotary club has provided £1,400 to fund the service for a year.

At the moment, residents have to travel to Saltash or Liskeard to see a CAB adviser. Callington has not had its own CAB service for four years.

‘One of the rotary club’s aims is to help with projects in the community where we live,‘ said Bob. ‘This one came up and we thought that it would benefit a lot of people in the Callington area.

‘We decided to put some money towards it, and have also got a grant from our rotary district, West Devon and Cornwall. We have put in £700 and they have put in £700, and that is going to cover us for the first year. If it takes off we will look to continue it, and to extend the number of surgeries we offer.

‘One of our members, Brian Saunders, is actually a Citizens Advice Bureau advisor, so he will be doing many of the surgeries. We are just worried that if it really takes off, we are going to have a queue of people and not be able to cope with the numbers we get!’

Brian said the trial service would allow him to gauge how many people were in real need of a service on their doorstep, perhaps due to lack of transport.

‘We used to run an outreach service to Callington from the Liskeard office, but because of a lack of resources that stopped,’ he said. ‘We didn’t have the manpower to staff it, but now what has happened is the rotary club in Callington has agreed to fund somebody for two hours a week, which has made it possible to start the service up again.

‘’This is very much a pilot, research to see what is needed or not needed, which will be determined by how many people use the service.

‘What we also want to find out is if people are just using it on the off-chance or are they people who can’t access the service any other way? We think that perhaps there are people who don’t access our advice because they haven’t got transport. If the numbers justify it, we will continue with it. If not we won’t.’

The free and impartial advice service will give residents advice on issues like debt, housing and unemployment.