Roding Centre Update

The last act in the Centre Saga is now being played. The Parish Council will purchase when its delicate negotiations with one long-standing user group are complete. The Council is trying to obtain agreement with the group about suitable terms for a lease from the Parish Council when the handover eventually takes place.

This long drawn-out process has caused by causedby the County Council's total failure to manage the Roding Centre in a business-like way for many years. It behaved as a bad landlord. Its failure to have proper agreements with the users meant there were no contracts to terminate. When it decided to sell it, it failed to see how much the centre means to all those groups people local pople who had been there for so long and who had nowhere else to go.

The Liberal Democrat Parish Council has a good record of running the Roding Valley Hall since it took it over as a loss-making venture fro the District Council. It intends to do the same with the Roding Centre, so that it becomes a focal point in that part of the town serving community and private residents' needs for a public hall.