Don’t shut our centre

Published 2 Sep 2010 09:30

By Ewan McInnes

RESIDENTS will voice their support for a community centre when it is independently reviewed tomorrow.

As East Renfrewshire Council continues to reduce costs by cutting services they cannot justify spending taxpayers’ money on, Dunterlie Resource Centre is next to be scrutinised.

Phil Traish, of the Renfrewshire anti-cuts committee, is urging people in Barrhead to come out and support the fight to keep the centre open by joining their demonstration at 1pm on Thursday.

The council’s asset review of all community services in the town is expected to total over 100 facilities and Phil insists Dunterlie residents will fight tooth and nail any plans to close or sell their centre.

He said: “We do not want to lose the centre from control of East Renfrewshire Council to an outside organisation who might not have the interest of the community at heart. The council might see it as an asset review but we see it more as asset stripping.

“The people of Dunterlie will be fighting to keep this service which serves Dunterlie really well and we will support any other community centres who want to fight these cuts.

“We want to make sure the council and only the council will remain as the owner of the building. Because of finances there are obvious fears for the centre and we don’t want any other group coming in and taking over.

“We want the Dunterlie Resource Centre to remain under public and democratic control.

Phil added: “We want to know the response of the independent review and what the situation is.

“We will not support any change of ownership.

“If the building is sold then in the long term a private company could take over and then demolish it for their own purposes. We do not want that to happen.”

A council spokesman was keen to point out that although they are looking to reduce costs no decision has yet been made on the future of the centre.

He said: “Most of our money is spent on salaries and properties and like all public services we are facing difficult financial times.

“We’ve had a redundancy trawl to reduce our salary costs and we are looking at properties across the whole area.

“In East Renfrewshire we have 130 properties that cost £12m-a-year to run. We will work hard to get the balance right between balancing the books and continuing to deliver excellent public services. But readers should be clear that no decisions have been taken on any specific properties at all.”

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This article appeared in Barrhead News 01 Sep 10

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