BURY Arts and Craft centre and the Mosses centre have been granted a stay of execution by community education bosses.

They will now have one year to find alternative sources of funding and resources in order to survive.

Campaigners were stunned when the two centres were short-listed for closure as a means of reducing the £178,000 shortfall in the Community Education Services (CES) budget.

But their shock turned to relief this week when education bosses gave them a temporary reprieve.

"We are obviously delighted and will now work together with the council to secure funding and resourcing for the survival of community education," said Community Education Council (CEC) chairman, Mr Gordon Hubert.

A steering group of all interested parties will be formed within the next few weeks to decide the way ahead.

Last year the service had its budget reduced by £630,000. Centres across the borough were told they had to meet 20 per cent and 50 per cent of their running costs for the past and present financial year respectively if they wished to survive.

But it soon became apparent that this was an impossibility for many centres, especially the smaller ones. Their closure would not achieve the savings required which is why education bosses turned to higher cost centres like the Mosses and the Arts and Crafts.

Pleading for another year and financial help and support from Bury Council, chairman of the Arts and Crafts centre Mrs Mary Edyvean said: "The building is too precious to mothball, it's had a great past and it must have an even better future."

She told the education and community services committee at a meeting on Wednesday (June 10): "It makes me sad to think of more than 1,500 users of our building and 60 part-time tutors who may suddenly have nowhere to go."

But whereas she wants the 104-year-old Broad Street building, which houses Bury's College of Adult Education, to survive, Mr Hubert is more pragmatic.

"Our bottom line is that the ethos of community education in the Mosses area must survive in the long term, not necessarily the building," he said.

Committee chairman Coun Dave Ryder said the maintainance? of buildings and provision of adult education should be two separate matters.

"If we want to fix the roof it costs a youth worker. It's a ridiculous equation that we have to break. It's going to take a year of hard thinking."

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