Didcot Citzens Advice Bureau left homeless by £1.3m renovation of Civic Hall (From The Oxford Times)

Didcot Citzens Advice Bureau left homeless by £1.3m renovation of Civic Hall

7:00am Wednesday 3rd March 2010 in

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DIDCOT’S Citizens Advice Bureau will be made homeless as part of the £1.3m Civic Hall renovation.

Town councillors decided to serve an eviction notice to the service, which has been housed at the Civic Hall since it was built in the 1980s.

It will move out when building work starts in August, and will have no space allocated to it when the project is completed.

Manager Judith Abela said she was “extremely concerned” about the service’s future.

She said: “It leaves us in an extremely difficult position and a very tight timescale to find an alternative.

“It was always going to be difficult because the initial space offered was less than we currently have, but now it looks as though we won’t have any space within the redevelopment at all.”

Mrs Abela wrote to the town council on February 4 asking for more space to be made available for the service.

But the Conservative-run town council decided a redesign would be too expensive and would add an unacceptable delay to the project.

The finance and general purposes committee voted to offer to lease a patch of land next to the hall to the CAB at a peppercorn rent, if it could find the funds to build new offices.

Council leader Bill Service said: “It is not the town council’s business to supply the Citizens Advice Bureau.

“On seeing the letter given to the town council, we felt that for them to move out during building work and then move back into a smaller premises than they have now was the worst option. Their preferred option is to move out completely and to build their own place.”

But Mrs Abela said that building a new premises was a long-term fundraising project, and not easily achieved.

She said: “For them to come out with a decision without consulting us about the repercussions leaves me very concerned about the way in which they deal with the CAB.”

Labour party councillors condemned the decision of the Conservative-run council as “Tory cuts”, saying the taxpayer-funded revamp of the town hall would end up depriving Didcot of a key service.

Labour group leader Margaret Davies said: “It is an appalling decision. Just as more people than ever are using the service, it is being left without time to find alternative accommodation.

“The Civic Hall is being renovated to cope with a doubling of the population, yet they are kicking out one of the main services contained within it.”

The Citizens Advice Bureau has had 20 per cent more enquiries since the beginning of the recession, and anticipates the trend continuing over the next two years.

Last July, town councillors voted to cut the bureau’s annual grant from £10,122 to £3,350, forcing it to scale back its services in the middle of the financial year.