Local authorities such as Bradford Council are constantly facing difficult decisions with regards to allocating their spending.

There is only a limited amount of money in the coffers and it is a balancing act to try to ensure that something approaching a consistent level of service is offered at the same time as trying to reduce spending.

Inevitably, this means that some services and jobs will be under threat because with the best will in the world it is impossible to provide everything that everyone wants on not enough money.

The latest proposed casualty of the belt-tightening at City Hall looks to be the customer service centres. There are currently six of these in the district, and under the plans four would close completely and the remaining two, one in Bradford and one in Keighley, would offer a service with more focus on people accessing information themselves rather than seeing an adviser.

We live in an increasingly automated age, and much more business is conducted on the internet, so it makes sense that some of the council's services will take advantage of constantly-improving technology.

However for many people, especially older members of our communities, there is simply nothing better than a face-to-face meeting with a real human being, especially if they are having problems.

That side of things won't go completely under the new proposals, but it will be vastly reduced. It is to be hoped that if this road is indeed gone down, there will be plenty of help offered to those who need to access council services and they won't be left to founder in a digital sea of information.