A VILLAGE'S district council office is set to close this summer but local people have been promised they will not have to travel far to pay their bills.

Pendle councillors are being recommended to close the district cash collection office at Holmefield House, Gisburn Road, Barrowford, from July 31 after a cost-cutting review of the service.

If the closure is agreed, alternative payment centres would be set up at the village's Marsden Building Society office and post offices, and Pendle Council's door-to-door collection service would continue.

Two-thirds of the people using the office are pensioners.

A report by the council's revenues manager Derek Thomas, to go before councillors on Thursday, says: "The district office is proving uneconomic to run and uneconomic to improve at a time when its use is rapidly decreasing."

The office is currently open six-and-a-quarter hours a week. An average of 40 transactions are carried out each week but the operating cost to the council is £4,900 a year.

Each transaction costs £2.40, at least treble the costs at the council's best-used offices.

People can pay their rent and council tax at the offices.

The building itself is also unsuitable according to the report. "The principle problem is the lack of an adequate heating system and the poor general structure of the building," it adds.

It would cost at least £10,150 to renovate.

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