A COMMUNITY centre manager has spoken out after resident complaints over a lack of youth services on offer.

Emma Thorburn, services manager at Brampton Community Centre, has addressed concerns expressed by town residents, discussed at length during last week’s Brampton parish council meeting.

During the meeting, the parish council expressed a wish to see youth engagement activities return to the community centre.

“We need to make progress on this,” said Councillor Carol Bell. “It’s very smart now following the recent refurbishment. If we don’t work to move forward in some form, it will all have been for nothing.”

The parish council discussion also touched on recent claims made on social media about the state of the centre’s finances.

But Ms Thorburn said any suggestion that the community centre was sitting on unused funds meant for youth projects was untrue.

“This suggestion that there’s £13,000 worth of funding for youth projects still available to the community centre - that’s not true. We have no funds for youth groups at all,” Ms Thorburn said.

Explaining that the community centre’s most recent funding for youth services ran out in March last year, Ms Thorburn said the community trust behind the centre is hoping to secure further funds in the coming months.

“Any youth activity is dependent on acquiring grants. It’s not self funding,” she told The Cumberland News.

“We are not in a position to take it all on independently. We can only succeed if we are working with partners.

“Nobody is in a position to be able to fund anything independently. Everybody is feeling the tightening of resources.”

Ms Thorburn said that if Brampton parish council is unable to contribute financially to re-establishing youth services at the community centre, she hoped it will throw its full support behind upcoming funding bids.

“If they gave their support, that would really bolster the position of the bid if it had their backing,” she said.

“We very much want to work with the parish council and the police to solve this community issue.

“Any bids can only be strengthened by demonstrating that we are partners working together.”

She stressed that if funding for youth activities at the community centre is secured again, it could help to address the continuing concerns in Brampton over anti-social behaviour.

Ms Thorburn said that some of the recent incidents were minor, better described as “nuisance behaviour”.

As such, a more appropriate response is to provide more to engage young people.

“It does not benefit anybody to put them into the criminal justice system,” Ms Thorburn added.