A NEW telephone tracking system may have to be installed at Malvern Town Council offices to take the guesswork out of estimating phone bills.

The council recently installed a new telephone system at its Belle Vue Terrace offices. All telephones in the building now run off this system, including those owned by Community Action and Health Promotions, which rents offices in the building.

But without a £1,740 call management system, the town council is unable to itemise and therefore individually bill the calls.

"At the moment we have to guess how many calls the tenants are making," said acting town clerk Rosemary Lansdowne.

Councillor David Williams told a town council meeting: "The original intention was for this system to have been put in from day one, but under the cost cutting regime at the time, this wasn't installed."

Telephone bills for the offices were unavailable at a meeting earlier this month, and councillors deferred a decision on whether to install the call management system until the budget working party had gathered all the figures.

"If this call management system was cut out as an economy measure, it doesn't seem very economical to me to be guessing people's telephone bills," said the Deputy Mayor, Coun Frances Victory.