A PARISH council's chat forum has had to be taken off the internet because it was directing net surfers to porn and gambling sites. The facility on Yatton Parish Council's website has been shut down because councillors say they don't want people to get mo

A PARISH council's chat forum has had to be taken off the internet because it was directing net surfers to porn and gambling sites.The facility on Yatton Parish Council's website has been shut down because councillors say they don't want people to get more than they bargained for when they log on.Previously people had been able to enter the site's forum to correspond with other users and post links to their personal websites but people have been abusing the facility.Parish council chair, Faith Moulin, said: "People have been clicking on the links and have found something really awful."There is a facility for forum members to put links to their own websites on there and someone is putting links to porn and gambling sites."People logging on can't tell it's not a bona fide link."The parish council, which runs the website, does not want innocent people and children coming across this type of thing."The forum was really successful when it was running as people were posting suggestions and questions about the village."But now because we have taken the forum off, the website is just one way information and we cannot get any feedback."Whether we can start it up again in the future depends on whether we can get the software to prevent the problem, which is expensive.