CAMPAIGNERS aiming to prevent the closure of Camelford Leisure Centre were "taken aback"?following a meeting with Cornwall Councillor Joan Symons (Cabinet Member for Customer First and Culture) on Monday evening, having been told that the subsidy offered for the centre over the coming year would be significantly lower than the amount they thought they would be receiving.

At the meeting Cllr Symons announced that the support for Camelford Leisure Centre for 2011-12 from the leader of the council would be £50,000 — which is less than 45 per cent of the budgeted shortfall of £117,000. For the following year, the much reduced amount is £10,000.

Chairman of Camel­ford Forum and campaigner, Jonathan Holt, said he believed Cornwall Council had "misled" the community surrounding future funding of the town's leisure centre.

Following a Scrutiny Committee meeting on November 3 with Cllr Symons, it was widely understood that Cornwall Council would be providing full "substantial" funding for the coming year, to enable the centre to run normally and allow for suitable planning to be made for the future.

Mr Holt said:?"The amount Cornwall Council is proposing is less than a substantial amount. It is not a workable model that will allow for continued sustainability. If we had understood that the council were not fully funding the centre for the next year, it would have been thrown back.

"We feel distinctly let down. Rev Jim Benton-Evans commented 'It's like they have given us a bus to run on a third of a tank of fuel.' We now have to try to move forward, but it is difficult to do so with such a short timescale."

Mr Holt said that meetings will take place to see where the campaign goes from here, and that structures will need to be established that the community feels a part of and represented by.

Cornwall Council's Shadow Cabinet Member for Libraries, Culture and Leisure, Cllr Alex Folkes, said:?"At the scrutiny meeting, it was quite clear to me that the council was promising to fully fund the leisure centre until a long term solution could be found with the proviso that the full funding could not last for more than a year. If Cllr Symons had meant that only £50,000 was on offer, then why didn't she say so?

"The clear impression given was that there would be full funding of the current level of subsidy until a workable deal was done and implemented, so long as that was within a year and that if a deal was done more quickly then the subsidy would end sooner."

He continued:?"This U-turn puts the chances of saving Camelford Leisure Centre at serious risk. There is little chance that a new structure can be found and implemented within six months with all the legal niceties in place.

"Was Joan Symons misleading the committee when she made her announcement to the committee? I would hope and think not. But what is clear is that the scrutiny committee believed that the deal was for the full amount and approved it on that basis."

But Cllr Symons has said she was very disappointed at the response from some local people to the council's offer to continue to provide financial support to the centre.

"I made it very clear at the scrutiny meeting that the leader was proposing to make a substantial financial contribution towards the running costs of the centre over the next twelve months to enable alternative options to be considered but did not say that we would continue to provide the whole amount."

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