A FULL-SCALE review of Burnley District Citizens Advice Service is to be carried out after calls for a cut in its grant were rejected.

The service receives around £255,000 nearly five per cent of Burnley Council's entire grants budget.

Conservative leader Peter Doyle, suggested cutting the grant the service gets from the council to £200,000, a drop of more than 20 per cent.

But the motion was voted down at a meeting of the council and instead a review of the organisation was ordered.

The position on the council's funding will be reviewed at the end of the inquiry likely to be in October.

Bosses at the service today said they were delighted the move to cut funds had been defeated and insisted that they provided good value for money.

Chief executive Rosemary Bowling said: "We bring in well over £1million a year in benefits and have resolved hundreds of thousands of pounds of debt problems so we feel we give very good value for money.

"A review is not something we object to because we are confident that we provide a good service, but any cut in money would be a great shame as it would inevitably mean a cut in the level of service we can provide to the people of Burnley.

"We have a long waiting list of people with debt problems, something that is becoming more and more of an issue for people, and we would be less able to help people like that."

"For many people we are the only place they can turn and for anybody to suffer because of a reduction in the support we can give would be very sad."

Coun Doyle moved: "The grant to Burnley District Citizens Advice Service given by this council be reduced to £200,000 for the financial year April 1 2006 to March 31 2007.

"We recognise the value of the work of the service, but this council needs to be prudent in the manner in which it allocates its limited resources to provide quality services to all the residents of the borough.

"The grant that we, as a council, pay is large in relation to our total budget and is totally out of proportion."

Council leader Stuart Caddy said any cut would mean a reduction in the service which could be provided to the community and called for the council to back the review.

Leader of the Liberal Democrats Gordon Birtwistle said: "It would be totally unreasonable to cut the money at this late stage, but we will look carefully at the independent report."

The Citizens Advice Service is a stand-alone Burnley group formed in 2002 when the Citizens Advice Bureau, Community Advice Centre and Asian Centre merged.