"SHEER panic" was the reaction at Bury's Mosses community centre after the Bury Times broke the news of its closure.

Staff and volunteers at the borough's first purpose-built community centre were this week reassuring hundreds of users that they were still open for business - for now.

Centre committee chairman Mrs Margaret Robinson said the news caused "sheer panic" and left members and staff "angry, upset and confused".

They were particularly upset that they found out through the pages of the Bury Times last Friday that Bury Council's ruling Labour group had approved a confidential report recommending the Mosses and Arts and Crafts Centres, both in Bury town centre, merge.

The report described the Mosses as "past its best".

"As far as we are concerned, we have already talked about the future of the centre, and decided what we want to do," said Mrs Robinson this week.

"We agreed plans to raise a higher proportion of running costs for this year, and that's what we are going ahead with."

She said they would talk about the future, but did not want policy to be decided without them.

"We had no idea that this was policy," she said. "We were aware that there was a report, but not what it was proposing." Mr Gordon Hubert was Labour's chairman of education at the time the Mosses centre was opened in 1973, is now chairman of the Community Education Council. He too was also incensed by the way users found out.

In a letter to the Bury Times, Mr Hubert describes the Mosses as "the jewel in the centre of a many jewelled community crown and said it had "years of life left in it".

His views were echoed by one of the Mosses' newest tenants - the Gateway Club, which helps adults with learning disabilities.

They are moving this week from Bury's Central Methodist Church, itself earmarked for demolition, to a new home at the Mosses.

Talks took place during consultations on cuts to the Community Education Service budget, and at that point all centres looked safe as long as they could raise 20 per cent of their running costs themselves.

In the report shown to the Bury Times last week by council leader Derek Boden, it was noted that this would rise to 50 per cent next year, a figure described in the report as "unfeasible".

The centre committee are planning a meeting on the evening of Thursday, June 26.

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