A OUTREACH service brought in to fill the gap after the closure of West Devon Borough Council’s customer service office in St James Street has been extended for three months – but reduced to one day a week.

Councillors at a recent hub meeting of West Devon Borough Council rejected a proposal to close the under-used service immediately in a bid to see if the number of people using the service increased.

They heard from officers that the two day a week service at the Ockment Centre was under-used and was costing the council £43.13 per visit.

People should be directed to do their council business online, suggested council chief executive Sophie Hosking, and the locality officers providing the service would be better deployed elsewhere.

However Okehampton north councillor Tony Leech suggested the service was being under-used because people in Okehampton did not know about it.

He asked why a sign had not been put outside the Ockment Centre to indicate the presence of a council locality officer on Wednesdays and Fridays between 10am and 4pm.

‘I have asked for a basic sign to be put up outside the Ockment Centre just to show when the service is there,’ said Cllr Leech. ‘It still hasn’t happened. Hundreds of mums, dads and grandparents walk past the Ockment Centre each day on their way to the primary school. It is a perfect opportunity to direct people to the service.

‘I think in fact it is that nobody wanted to, they wanted to force people down the website route.’

Ms Hosking responded: ‘The intention of providing the service at the Ockment Centre wasn’t to provide more of a service, it was to mitigate the loss of the St James Street service. There was no intention of providing a lot of notices outside the Ockment Centre. We are not trying to drum up more business.’

She added: ‘The default position has to be digital communication, the natural progression is we will see more and more people able to do their business online in their own homes at their own convenience.’

However several councillors were worried about residents who were not comfortable with going online.

Cllr Ric Cheadle said: ‘We’ve been hearing in the news that ten per cent of the population still don’t know how to use a computer. This increases in the over 65s and we have a larger proportion of them in West Devon. In addition to that we are the worst place in the country for broadband. While I support efforts to move our business online, can we be sure that we are not cutting off people who don’t have access to the internet and if they do have access don’t know how to use it?’

Cllr Annabel Roberts suggested those who struggled to use the internet could use the call centre.

‘It is making sure the call centre becomes more and more efficient and is able to answer people’s questions first time,’ she said. ‘The locality officers are able to go out and help people who have problems with online access and using the website.’

Options on the table before councillors were to extend the two day a week service at the Ockment Centre for a further 12 months, at a cost of more than £11,000, to reduce the service to a single day per week and look at whether or not to close it permanently in six months’ time, or to shut the service permanently on April 1 and deploy the locality officers elsewhere.

However councillors voted instead to maintaining a service, albeit one day a week instead of two, and review the situation in July. The council shut its Okehampton customer service office in St James Street last April to save £82,000 from the council budget.