Seeking to justify Brighton and Hove City Council's decision to close the daily service at Hove Citizens' Advice Bureau (CAB), chief executive David Panter said the CAB "wanted" to merge its Brighton and Hove bureaux (February 13).

But when the same claim was made by Councillor Don Turner last December, Norman Bennett and Martin Groombridge, respectively the chairman and vice-chairman of the Brighton and Hove CAB management committee, wrote to The Argus (Letters, December 10) to state such a claim was downright untruthful.

They made it clear, although the CAB wanted to merge both bureaux in due course if suitable premises could be found, neither the existing Brighton nor Hove offices fitted the bill and it would have preferred to keep them both open.

It said the lack of a full-time CAB service for Hove and Portslade was "A matter to be laid entirely at the feet of the council".

There are now two important questions. Why did Mr Panter repeat in The Argus article a statement he must surely have known from the previous exchanges to be "downright untruthful?"

And how many more of his so-called facts are also downright untruthful?

-Peter Bartram, Brighton and Hove Liberal Democrats