More bailouts to keep Sutton Life Centre alive (From Your Local Guardian)

More bailouts to keep Sutton Life Centre alive

9:10am Thursday 9th February 2012 in Top Stories By Matt Watts

More bailouts to keep Sutton Life Centre alive

The controversial Sutton Life Centre overspent by £261,200 this year, despite the council predicting it would not cost taxpayers a penny.

The figures emerged this week as the council’s leisure boss, Daniel Ratchford, admitted the council was not confident the educational facility would ever reach the levels of use it had hoped.

Just 153 schools have visited the centre since it opened in October 2010, despite council predictions the education facility would pay for itself by accommodating 1,300 visits a year from schools.

Conservative opposition deputy leader Councillor Tim Crowley told a meeting of the council’s executive on Monday the attendance figures meant the council had to bail out the centre with £494,000 in the 2010-11 financial year – figures that included £233,000 transferred from previous library and youth centre budgets.

He said similar amounts would be required for the next financial year – even with the council’s business plan predicting it could bring in close to £220,000 in customer receipts, almost three times its takings for 2010-11.

In the council’s budget, voted through by the council executive on Monday, it was also agreed a further £250,000 from what was previously planned should be put into the Life Centre from the council budget for future years as “an ongoing budget adjustment”.

Coun Crowley said it was time to admit the Life Centre was unsustainable, and that the council had completely backtracked on previous statements the centre would not cost Sutton taxpayers.

He told the council executive: “I urge you to make some difficult decisions about what is increasingly a financial black hole.”

Councillor John Drage, the council’s executive member for finance, said: “Don’t forget we are getting a great many high class benefits to local people.

“We would say that a budget of £250,000 is in many ways providing good value, when in particular young people are benefiting from it.”

Councillor Jayne McCoy said: “We are not a business, we are not providing services in order to run a profit.”

She accepted the predictions for income for the Life Centre were not realistic in a recession.

One plan the council has to increase its revenue is to run it as a business centre.

It was set up to teach children about citizenship using the latest interactive technology.