Concern has been raised over Wellington police station's 'unreliable' opening hours.

The Victoria Street station saw its opening hours reduced in 2018, in order to make "financial savings."

It is now advertised as being open 16 hours a week, On Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays between 10am and 2pm.

However there have been occasions when the station failed to open during these times, with residents left confused.

One Wellington resident, who said they attended the station on Friday April 14 to hand in a lost phone, found the station closed when they arrived at 10.05am, when it it was supposed to have been open.

The same week, another resident said they had turned up the station to report suspected burglaries, only to find the door locked and nobody at the desk.

Responding to concerns, a spokesperson for Avon and Somerset Police said: "These hours were last updated in 2018, following a review which looked at footfall across all enquiry offices with the aim of making financial savings with minimal impact to the public.

"The review found the quietest day was Saturday, with only one to two people visiting (on average), so the decision was made to maintain 16 open-hours per week but opening Thursday instead of Saturday in line with public demand.

"When we are short staffed, our resourcing decisions aim to ensure enquiry offices are open during published opening hours while also ensuring a spread across the force area. We regularly update the website to reflect closures due to resourcing issues, but unfortunately our enquiry offices are sometimes closed at short notice.

"If an enquiry office is closed, there is a yellow hatch phone which allows the public direct contact with the contact centre who deal with 101 and 999 calls. The nearest alternative enquiry office to Wellington is Taunton which is open Monday to Friday for longer hours or Bridgwater which opens Monday to Friday between 6pm and 8pm and weekends 9am and 5pm."

Wellington Town Councillor Marcus Barr expressed his disappointment that the station had failed to observe 'reliable' opening times. He said: "It's not very good for the town that we don't really know if the police station is open or not.

"The police have got thousands of staff, surely they can find somebody to man the desk in Wellington. It rather indicates that the police don't view Wellington as important enough to send people here to keep the station open.

"It's really disappointing. We as a town council have a pretty good relationship with the local police, and I'm sure they are doing everything they can, but it's the senior leadership in Portishead who take these decisions, and we don't seem important enough for them to bother about.

"I will be using the Police and Crime Commissioner, Mark Shelford, about this the next time I see him, because we need Wellington to have a better and more reliable service from the police force."