A project to improve the way Bristol City Council serves the public could be cut back, it is feared.

Six so-called Customer Service Points (CSPs) set up around the city to allow face-to-face contact with officials are likely to be reduced to four, according to a report.

Opposition councillors believe the cut – which would save around £160,000 a year in staff costs at each office – could even be deeper.

Liberal Democrat councillors Tim Kent (Whitchurch Park) and Gary Hopkins (Knowle) fear just two CSPs – the so-called flagship in Cabot Circus and one in Bedminster – would survive the cull.

"There are already a lot of people out there who feel the council doesn't listen to them or give them the services they deserve," said Mr Hopkins.

"This just looks as though the council is hiding away even more."

The council insists there are no proposals and the intention at the moment is still to have six customer service points, some of them based on former area housing offices.

Councillor John Bees (Lab, Kingsweston), the cabinet member in charge, told the Bristol Post: "The position has not changed."

But councillors on the resources scrutiny commission were on Friday presented with a document called the Customer Excellence Programme Revised Outline Business Case.

It says: "The business case currently assumes that there will be a reduction of two CSPs from six to four, with an associated staff saving of £160,000 from each."

In 2007 the authority launched a massive overhaul of its "interface" with the public.

Access to Bristol (A2B) sought to put a cheerful smile on the face the Labour-led council presents to the world.

The new customer service centre in Old Market, a call centre where operators are trained to help deal with problems raised by the public, is successful and remains a key part of the scheme.

But the six CSPs – four of them at ex-housing offices in Fishponds, Hartcliffe, Lawrence Weston and Southmead – were also presented as being important to the project.

Now it looks as though at least two of these – it is not clear which, but Mr Kent fears Symes House, at Hartcliffe, could be one of them – could close, perhaps as early as 2010.

The justification would be that many more people are contacting the council online and many fewer actually want a face-to-face service.

But this "21st century" trend was already known about late in 2007 when the authority was presenting six CSPs as the way forward.

The report to tomorrow's scrutiny meeting is set to come before the ruling Labour cabinet for approval in February.

Senior officers are expected to see a "full" business case in April or May, with the politicians making decisions some time later – perhaps, after the local elections in June.

Mr Hopkins said he had been told last year by former top-tier council officer Ian Crawley that senior officials had felt it was "unnecessary to have the numbers of CSPs that were planned".

They had felt, apparently, that customer contact could be just as efficient by phone or email – and that only two CSPs might be needed eventually.

Mr Kent believes this is corroborated by a reference in the council report to the possibility of further savings on face-to-face contact as the public is increasingly happy to use computers or the phone.

Mr Hopkins said: "Our view is that there are some people who need face-to-face contact, particularly older people or those who are raising complicated problems.

"The thought that there might no longer be somewhere they can get to where someone understands how the council works could lead to a loss of public confidence."

But Mr Bees said: "We will press ahead with the six customer service points and will continue to review just how much demand there is for them.

"Customers are showing a clear preference for contacting the council by phone and increasingly online.

"The council has invested heavily in customer service helplines to meet that demand.

"We are pleased to do so. And we are more than happy to respond to what customers want by closely monitoring the services they actually use."

Council spokesman Simon Caplan said trends were changing rapidly. "As we improve our online facility, we will probably see the footfall (use of CSPs) dropping," he said.

"But no policy decision has been taken to reduce the CSPs below six. That decision would be subject to a further report.

"All they are saying is that the way the world looks it would imply that in a few years' time they would be able to reduce from six to four CSPs."