Surrey County Council’s leader is to be called to a meeting to explain why Haslemere has been targeted for cuts to services.

Two services provided by the county council have been axed in recent months – professional youth workers based at the Wey Centre and the weekly collection of landfill rubbish from the town’s Wey Hill Fairground car park.

Haslemere councillors agreed last week to convene a special meeting of the town council when Surrey’s Tory leader David Hodge will be asked to confirm his availability to attend.

Meanwhile the town council will step in to fund youth work at the Wey Centre in St Christopher’s Road, at least until the next financial year.

Councillors agreed last week that £3,250 left over in this year’s Community Fund budget will be used, plugging the gap until April.

The professional youth work at the St Christopher’s centre includes counselling and advice on contraception, alcohol and drugs, services which volunteers at the centre are not qualified to give.

Funding for the town’s youth service was withdrawn in September, when councillors voiced fears the withdrawal of the youth worker could lead to the county-owned centre closing at a later date.

With funding cut by 11 per cent for youth work across Surrey, the county council decided to focus on Godalming and Farnham, where it was assessed there was a greater need because the larger towns have denser populations and more areas of anti-social behaviour. But it meant Haslemere lost its professional youth service completely, although the Wey Centre has stayed open with volunteers running three sessions per week.

In a new “spoke and hub model” for delivering youth services in Waverley, Farnham has five sessions per week, Godalming four and Cranleigh one.

Haslemere Town Council has set aside provisional funds of £12,000 for each service in the draft budget for 2016/17 in the event it steps in and replace both the youth workers and the weekly rubbish collection next year. But the consensus of opinion was tax payers would “effectively have to pay twice” if they were paid for by the town, because they would be paying both Surey and the town through the council tax precept.

Councillor Libby Piper said: “The county council is not going to reduce the rates to make up for the loss, so residents are going to be paying twice.”

The town’s Saturday “dustcart” collection was stopped in September, and councillors are also considering whether to replace it with a town council-funded scheme which would cover part of the cost.

In response to a question from a member of public at the meeting, Mrs Piper, the chairman of the budget committee, said the £12,000 was a “possible contribution” towards the cost of the dustcart service, but at the moment negotiations were ongoing.

She added: “We have taken a figure and put it in [the draft budget] at the moment so we can see what impact it would have on the budget as a whole.”

Negotiations are ongoing into whether it is feasible for the town council to pay for the waste collection lorry, but leave the county to dispose of the waste.

Mayor Melanie Odell gave an update at last week’s meeting, saying: “We put a proposal to Surrey County Council whereby we would organise the collection of the waste, but we would expect them to dispose of the waste collected, because we understood that was their statutory duty.”

She added: “It would involve the carrier – whoever provided the service to the town council – tto have a goods transfer licence, and all of these are in early negotiations, and much of it would all depend on whether Surrey will dispose of any waste collected on our behalf.”

The service was withdrawn on September 26, with Surrey claiming it was used by only three per cent of people living in Haslemere at a cost of £60,000 a year to taxpayers.

A town hall-led campaigned failed to stop the dustcart being axed by the county, with a count showing around 600 cars a day used the service. A petition signed by 1,601 residents.

The dustcart service had also been under threat once before, back in 2010.

But it won a stay of execution five years ago after a campaign in which 1,700 signatures were collected on a petition to save the Saturday household refuse removal service.

The refuse from Haslemere is taken to Guildford’s Slyfield Green’s tipping hall and sorted, with some materials such as metal and large wood recoverable.

But the waste mainly comprises “black bag” waste which have been compacted and crushed in the back of the dustcart.

Although the recycling and garden waste provided by Waverley Borough Council remains at the car park, residents now have to drive 15 miles to Witley and back to get rid of landfill rubbish.