DURHAM County Council’s customer access point (CAP) at Barnard Castle library will only be open three days a week if new proposals are accepted.
It is currently open to the public from Monday to Wednesday between 10am and 5pm and on Friday between 10am and 4.30pm.
Under the new recommendations which is to be considered by the county council’s cabinet today (Wednesday) the CAP will close on a Wednesday and only operate on Monday, Tuesday and Friday.
A report by the council director of resources Paul Darby said changes were proposed for four of the county’s least used CAPs.
It said: “Changes in both working practices and customer behaviour have resulted in a reduction in demand for face-to-face customer service provision and an increase in demand across alternative customer service pathways.”
It added that most people were using telephones, email or webchat to access
customer services at the council.
Mr Darby’s report said: “More recently, an artificial intelligence based ‘Chatbot’ has been successfully introduced to complement these channels.”
Other CAPs affected are at Chester-le-Street, Consett and Stanley.
The report said the changes, which are to be implemented by October, would save about £137,000.
The savings will be made by reducing four full-time equivalent posts by deleting vacant posts.
The report said footfall at access points fell off when they were reopened in April 2022 after having been closed during the Covid pandemic.
It said this was because more people had become more internet literate when the service was shut.
![A COUNTY councillor is backing a campaign to get a pedestrian crossing in Staindrop. Frustrated parish councillors in the village summoned their county council representative Cllr George Richardson to their latest meeting to discuss several issues, including the call for a safe way to cross the A688. Earlier this year their request for a crossing was turned down by the county council’s highways officers. Parish council chairman Jonothan Raper described the reasons for the refusal as “spurious” and called on Cllr Richardson to support their campaign. He added: “One of the arguments they made was there is no clear line of desire when they studied the village – well this isn’t a clear line of desire because there isn’t a crossing, people cross whenever they can. “When the lollipop person was there, one of the things I noticed was people would walk all the way down to the lollipop person to cross the road to go to the shop or to go to the school.” He added a problem of parking at the primary school is exacerbated because people are too afraid to walk their children across the road. Cllr Richardson said he had supported previous attempts for a crossing point with the first being made about 15 years ago. He added: “We went fairly well down the road with that and they looked into it. The only recommended place was where the bus stop is and to get the visibility splays, people on the other side of the road would lose their parking. “That didn’t go down well so it just died a death.” Cllr Raper said he suspected the real reason for the officers’ refusal was the cost of installing a crossing. He added that much of the cost could be recovered from savings made on not having to employ a lollipop patrol. Cllr Raper said: “A lollipop person only provides a benefit of crossing for three hours of the day. You are getting 21 extra hours of crossing time [with a pedestrian crossing].” Cllr Richardson said he would raise the issue with the county council’s cabinet member for highways, Cllr John Shuttleworth.](https://teesdalemercury.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/georgeR-120x86.jpg)
