I USE the little council office in the Crescent car park quite often and was sad to hear that the new One Cornwall Council is closing it down. I have used the office to sort out Council Tax Benefit. It is ideal for old people as the lady there is very good and helps with filling in forms. It is private and that is a good thing because you sometimes have to discuss personal matters or hand over bank statements for photocopying.

I am told these things will be done at Bude Library in future. That may seem all right but you will be in the open library, standing at a counter next to someone ordering a library book. Would you want to conduct your private business in the library?

Many of us pay our Council Tax bills in cash at the office in the Crescent. You will be able to pay at the library but it will be through a machine. We older ones won't be bothering with that. We'll just send a cheque in the post. I suppose that's what the new council really wants us to do anyway.

The new council will say: "Oh, what a lovely service for the Bude people." We had a lovely service from the lady in the Crescent. In the library it will be just a case of, "here's your form, go away and fill it in." We will know our service was better before.

I am not getting at the library people. Bude Library is very good but why close down the Crescent office? It is not like the council office is closing in Launceston, that one will carry on just the same. They're even opening them up in some places. Why does Bude always suffer?

Bude lost out years ago when they set up North Cornwall District Council. Now they are scrapping NCDC and setting up the new Cornwall Council and what a surprise, Bude is going to lose out again.

No one in Bude will stand up and fight. I'm too old to do it but maybe some younger and better educated person can fight. Someone please ask the questions: 1) Why are we having something taken away when other towns are not? 2) What is the new council going to do with the Crescent office?

Bude.

Annie Moore of Comm­un­ications & Marketing for the One Cornwall Team, comments:

"The One Cornwall team looked at various options for the one stop shops and decided that the library was more suitable in terms of its size and facilities for the kind of service the council wants to offer.

"Having said that, and as an NCDC officer, I can quite understand why people will be sorry to lose the office which is obviously very convenient as it is right next to the car park."