TWO councillors have got embroiled in a war of words over whether public views are being taken seriously enough by those in power.

It comes amid a decision to scale down a major Worcestershire survey to just once a year to save money.

Over the last few years councils, the NHS, police and fire service have conducted the Worcestershire Viewpoint survey twice yearly to gauge the views of residents on various public services.

The winter survey, typically done around November time, will no longer go ahead, with the organisations relying on just a spring one from now on instead.

In the latest survey, which went out to 1,800 homes, just 29 per cent of people in Worcester felt they could influence decisions "in their local area".

It was higher than the 20 per cent on the previous survey, but is still considered stubbornly low among politicians.

Labour Councillor Paul Denham, speaking during a meeting of the performance, management and budget scrutiny committee, said: "When you look at the question on if people 'think they can influence decision making', the figure is abysmal.

"The question I've got is, are the current administration concerned about community engagement?"

Conservative Councillor Lucy Hodgson, cabinet member for customer services and communication, said: "When this survey was carried out both administrations (the current Tory one and Labour until June) were in power, nobody can argue that we should have changed things around so quickly.

"In fact a lot of the information we have in front of us is from the survey in November last year."

Councillor Denham then said: "That rather confirms to me that your intentions on community engagement seems to be reducing, not increasing."

Cllr Hodgson told the meeting he was "making assumptions when there is no grounds for it", saying improving public attitutudes is "a priority now as much as it always was".

Managing director Duncan Sharkey said: "We do listen to people when they say things.

"What this reveals, to me, is that the whole point of the council is to make difficult decisions."