A GRANT of £500 has been given to Falmouth Citizens Advice Bureau by the town council after it was told the money was needed to keep the office running during the pandemic.

Gill Pipkin, Chief Officer at Citizens Advice Cornwall, told a meeting of Falmouth Town Council's finance and general purposes committee that the money would be used for running costs at the office in Market Strand and enable volunteers to come in and be on the phones and webchat.

to help volunteers come into the office to support each other with calls.

"Each time we go into lockdown we review the situation," she said. "We are encouraging everybody to work from home where they can but we need to keep the hub offices like Falmouth open for clients to post stuff and to enable us to receive information on behalf of clients.

"It is also a safe space for advisors who don't have the confidence advising from home. Some of the issues that we are receiving at the moment are quite distressing, and for newer advisors to offer them the proper support to come into the office.

"We are trying to keep everybody two metres apart with antibacterial spray everywhere and masks, so we are trying to keep everybody safe and also offer them a place where they can come in and advise."

The committee was reminded that up until four years ago the council did used to provide an annual grant to citizens' advice but they had told the council they no longer needed it and that was the only reason it had been dropped from the annual grant schedule.

Mrs Pipkin said she couldn't believe that the body had refused the offer of money.

Stephen Eva said all councillors knew how important this was and the council should look again at reinstating the yearly allowance to CAB which he believed was a thousand pounds a year.

Granting the application, the committee said the council should look at reinstating the annual grant from next year.