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Community base gets reprieve

Katie Fitzpatrick
29/ 1/2008

A CASH injection of £20,000 will keep Syke Community Base open until September.

Rochdale Council cabinet agreed on Monday night that money should be allocated from the budget pressures fund to help help the centre.

Syke Community Base has faced the axe since it was told just before Christmas that its £60,000-a-year government grant would be cut, signalling the closure of the base, job losses and the end of the area forum.

Following a campaign, the centre, which attracts hundreds of people to the Fieldhouse Industrial Estate every week, was offered £20,000 from the council to keep it running until summer. This has now been doubled by the cabinet.

The decision is a victory for the users, volunteers and staff who turned out to this month’s Rochdale Township Committee meeting armed with placards and drums.

The centre, which hosts activities organised by numerous groups ranging from the Golden Girls and Guys, mums and tots and the youth club, is still searching for permanent funding. But cabinet members considered that alternative sources of funding are unlikely to be immediately available.

And it was agreed that £20,000 from the pressure fund will enable the base, which was launched in 2002, to stay open until September.

It is expected that the longer term funding position of the Local Strategic Partnership, which pulled funding from the base, should be clear by then.