New One Stop Shop Opening Hours & the £190K Money Saving Mystery

In the latest edition of the 'The Fenlander Weekly', Fenland District Councils paid for weekly page in Archants' Wisbech Standard weekly newspaper, Fenland District Council are trumpeting about saving £190,000 by changing the hours on the 4 One Stop Shops in the area.  Chatteris, Whittlesey, March & Wisbech.  I'm not privy to the inner workings of the council but I assume that will be money saved in paying wages so again ordinary Fenlanders miss out.

There seems to be more behind this though if you look a little deeper.  Fenland District Council recently axed the Tourist Information Office in Wisbech making a number of redundancies.  Is the cost saving for that included in the £190,000 or is that more to add on top?

Still, it all sounds great......more savings equals a lower burden on council tax & business rates payers you would think.  I'm not so sure.  As I understand it, the lack of a tourist information office has been deemed unnacceptable & I fully agree with that point as tourism brings a lot of money into Wisbech & a central information point is essential.

So what's to be done?  I understand that a new Tourist Information office is to be created in Wisbech less than 100 yards from the one that has been shut & will be manned by volunteers thereby justifying the cost saving.  But opening a new office is not cheap.  Grants have been obtained & I've heard a figure of £60,000.  Now I do not know if the grant money is coming from central govt, Cambs County Council or Fenland District Council.  If it's the first two then great.  Fenland District Council will have saved all of us (except for the redundant workers) a great deal of money.  If it's the latter it's the worst case scenario of a money saving excercise costing more money.

I fully admit here that I don't know the full details which in a case like this are crucial.  Is it £60,000 p.a. or over a multi-year period?  Who's funding it?  Is this the same for all four towns or is it only Wisbech that has enough tourist traffic to make it necessary?  I don't know the answers to any of these questions, I can put two & two together & make a pretty educated guess but I don't know for a fact.  Maybe someone else could look into this & see whether it is another example of politicians releasing only the good news & omitting or 'spinning' the bad.

Finally, I want add that a new Tourist Office could be a really good thing for the town as the old one was about as much use as a chocolate teapot.  Getting new info about attractions into there was next to impossible & the staff was VERY precious about who was eligible even when multiple contradictions of their beloved policy was pointed out.