Just save centre (From Malvern Gazette)

Just save centre

10:58am Friday 13th July 2007 in Letters

The many teachers, pupils and parents who know the benefits of the Malvern Outdoor Centre will be concerned at the direction in which the county council may be heading.

Faced with massive support for continuing the centre, those responsible set up a task group to consider the future. At that point the public expected a simple answer to a simple question: "How can a hard-up council keep things going?"

But simplicity is out of fashion in local government and the task group has looked at the whole of outdoor education on a more ambitious, almost grandiose scale. Its declared aim is to "create a world-class outdoor education service for the 21st Century".

The report is a morass of mission statements, lists of core service partners, proposals for joint working, key national initiatives, development of a "structured motivational award scheme" and other complexities, as the officers try to squeeze outdoor centres into the educational scheme of things.

For example, they have let themselves be convinced that the south block at Malvern is entirely unsuitable for use, even if it is good for a few more years and the council itself recently invested about £40,000 in fire safety measures.

The report is in danger of destroying centres it set out to save. The public's only wish was for the Malvern Outdoor Centre to keep going and to go on providing the service they value so much.

I don't believe they either want or expect the council in its present financial state to commit itself to a "world-class service for the 21st Century". I hope the council's cabinet will ask the task group to think again and hope I have your support in urging them to do so.

Jeremy Webb, Cowleigh Road, Malvern