A SHADOW is hanging over Halton's Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB) with the announcement that its council funding is to be radically cut.

Hitesh Patel, chief executive of the advice service, has been told funding is to be reduced by £27,352 a year, representing a 15% cut in funding.

The charity has also been told it will have to pay commercial rent rates to the council for its Run-corn premises.

And the long-term financial security of CAB has also been affected, with the council's funding agreement being reduced to 12 months instead of three years.

The decision to cut costs was made in Halton Council's 2007 budget review.

The CAB has had hundreds of responses to an online survey asking what people would want from the reduced CAB service.

Respondents are overwhelmingly in favour of retaining an advice service which is independent of the council or Government agencies such as the benefits service.

The majority also want the service to cover multiple areas of law, not just provide advice on debt and benefits.

Significantly, 41% of respondents would not be willing to cross the bridge to use an advice service and 65% would feel uncomfortable obtaining advice from anywhere other than the CAB.

Mr Patel is drawing up ideas for how a reduced CAB service could operate, although exact details are still to be finalised.

He said the two offices are likely to run a drop-in service for two days a week.

Each office would have to run an appointments-only service for two days a week and each office would only be able to offer one day of telephone advice.

He said the two offices would have to alternate the service so people would still be able to get advice in an emergency.

It is also likely that two paid CAB staff will have to be laid off.

Mr Patel said: 'This creates huge uncertainty over our future and makes it more difficult to retain key staff.

'But we accept that the council is limited by the low level of central government funding Halton gets.

'In terms of impact, it is clear that we can no longer afford to maintain our current service of 48 hours of open door access across two sites.

'Based on these factors, the favoured option for the CAB is to reduce the operating hours of both the Widnes and Runcorn offices in order to safeguard a presence on both sides of the river and to maximise the benefit of having volunteers working for free in their local office.'

adrian.short@cheshirenews.co.uk