The Liberal Democrat Vale of White Horse District Council was rocked by another crisis today as Conservative Councillors expressed their outrage at the continuing poor performance of the Council’s telephone benefit advice service. The Conservatives first published details of the problems with the Councils system back in May 2007. Figures obtained by the Conservatives showed that in March only 1,600 of the 6,000 calls to the Councils helpline were answered. At the time Leader of the Conservative Group Cllr Melinda Tilley said “People ringing this helpline are often desperate for assistance and advice, they deserve to be treated with respect. Not long ago the Councils performance in this area was one of the best in the country, now it is quite frankly scary”.The latest figures obtained from the Conservatives show that this worrying scenario is continuing. Call logs from April to August show that on average over 3100 calls were still going unanswered every month.Cllr Matthew Barber commented, “This is quite frankly ridiculous, we pointed out this failing in April and the Liberal Democrats response was that they were unaware of a problem, they have now had five months to address the problem and we are still showing unacceptable response figures. We seem to be lurching from one crisis to another, we have the Council threatened with legal action for non payment of bills, we have had problems paying our own staff and still the people who need help and assistance can’t get through to anybody that can help them! When is someone from the administration going to hold their hands up and take responsibility?”Cllr Roger Cox Shadow Cabinet member for Contact Services added “This is simply not good enough, back in May we were told that this situation would be resolved and quite frankly it hasn’t, it’s time Mr Patterson came up with some answers rather than avoid the questions”