Witney's Citizens Advice Bureau is keen to continue a countryside scheme bringing help and advice to the elderly and disabled.

The Rural Advice Project, now in its fourth year, has a 96 per cent success rate in obtaining disability and income benefits for people who have been unaware of how to go about making claims.

But the bureau is dependent on funding from West Oxfordshire District Council and is now applying for a grant for 2002-3.

It is asking for £26,800 to pay for field workers to visit people, many of them elderly, in their own homes in outlying villages. On average, the project has 250 clients a year and brings in about £340 a year for those it makes claims for.