A Citizens Advice outreach operation has been axed because residents were too embarrassed to be seen going there to ask for help.

Advice sessions were run in the Townstal Community Hall but it has been closed down because so few people used it.

Instead residents would rather telephone Citizens Advice for help or travel to Totnes than be spotted by their neighbours.

Townstal residents make more inquiries to the advice service looking for help with debt, benefits and employment than the rest of the town and Kingswear combined, the latest figures reveal.

Yet the one-hour a week outreach sessions – where residents can have face-to-face talks with debt experts – were based in the bottom of the town at the Dartmouth Clinic, town councillors were told.

South Hams Citizens Advice manager Emma Handley said outreach sessions had been run from Townstal Community Hall but added: 'People were not coming to us and we took the decision to stop doing it.

'We had volunteers sat there twiddling their thumbs and we couldn't have volunteers doing that.'

Cllr Francis Hawke elaborated, saying: 'We found that the people of Townstal were reluctant to come to the community hall simply because people would see them and they would be thought of as people in debt.

'Citizens Advice is getting a lot of telephone calls and people were going into Totnes to visit rather that having the embarrassment of going to the hall in Townstal.'

More on this story in this week's Dartmouth Chronicle