In the absence of Kellie Beirne, Monmouthshire County Council's (MCC) Chief Officer for Enterprise, it was left to Mike Booth, General Manager of the Shire Hall and Nicola Edwards, Tourist Manager for MCC to plead the case for financial support for the town's tourist information service, currently housed at the Shire Hall.

It was a plea echoed throughout the county as the four towns of Monmouth, Abergavenny, Caldicot and Chepstow were asked for contributions from the town councils to maintain a tourist information service at its present level.

The target efficiency saving for the service has been put at £97,000 and councillors were told at Monday night's meeting (31st March) of Monmouth Town Council that it is a case of securing partnership funding at town council level or a reduction in the number of hours that the tourist information service will open.

Mike Booth stressed the economic benefits to the town, its traders and the local community from having the visible presence of a Shire Hall 'open for business', despite the income generated in a Sunday being very small.

"We have already made some cuts with the redundancy of the caretaker, but this does have an effect on the existing staff" he told councillors.

They currently have two apprenticeships running, and four volunteers helping on the front desk.

The Shire Hall is tasked by MCC to be self-sustaining and generate enough income to maintain itself and the vision is to move to a profit-making enterprise.

Councillor Gerry Bright questioned the benefit to the ordinary tax-payer when it would be traders and businesses that would see support from the building maintaining its present service and suggested looking to the Chamber of Trade and Commerce for support.

Councillor Graham Pritchard asked whether, as MCC had already set its budget for the coming year, this was a decision taken by officers, reminding them that Monmouth Town Council had already set its own budget for 2014-2015.

Councillors decided to defer the decision whether to support the proposal until more information could be gathered by their Finance and Policy Committee.