AXE DROPS ON DAY CENTRE

TEARFUL users of a Newhaven's Avis Way day centre left a county council cabinet meeting defeated on Tuesday.

They had gone to protest at the closure of the 37-year-old centre for adults with learning disabilities.

The cabinet agreed to closure despite protests from a number of county councillors, and approved transfer for some people to the St Nicholas' Centre in Lewes.

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Cllr John Livings said the projected savings were 'suspect' and added: 'There would be considerably more travelling time, lengthening their day by one or two hours or shortening activity time. The projected savings are suspect and questionable. It is wrong to infer St Nicholas's will cope. We will then have a situation where it gets full and what will we do then?'

Cllr Trevor Webb said: 'It is a dreadful decision. Every Christmas I seem to be fighting to keep something open. I feel like St Jude, the patron saint of lost causes.'

Cllr Jon Freeman said: 'Vulnerable people should always be a priority and 85 per cent of the users of Avis Way live in the coastal strip.

Keith Hinkley, director of Adult Social Care, said savings needed to be made and alternatives were available.

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Afterwards many of the service users and their parents and carers looked dejected and upset.

Mike Cookson, whose daughter Stephanie has been going to the centre for 17 years, said: 'It was what we expected but we will still carry on. If you even look at this report there are dirty great holes in it.

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They are not going to make the savings they say they are. They do not care about individual people, just about the budget.'

At a Newhaven Town Council meeting, Cllr David Rogers who is also a district and county councillor, said he and other county council colleagues will seek to have the decision called to the ESCC scrutiny committee.

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