VOLUNTEERS at a troubled community centre say they will not be able to pay off their £70,000 debt if they are forced to close the bar.

Oxford City Council, which owns Donnington Community Centre, wants its social club committee wound up and has withdrawn its consent for the sale of alcohol on the premises.

But Lord Mayor of Oxford Bill Baker, chairman of the community association which runs the centre, said the bar was running at a profit and without it there was no way the centre could pay Morlands brewery and its other creditors.

He said: "Without the bar, the centre could keep going. We could have a creche and bingo sessions and that sort of thing, but it's not going to make money."

Mr Baker added that the original £98,000 debt to the brewery - money loaned to build an extension about eight years ago - was now £50,000. Another £12,000 is owed to Morlands for dray deliveries and the rest of the £70,000 is in old bills for National Insurance and VAT.

"It makes me so angry. We had a solution which most probably Morlands would have agreed with and over a period of time people would have got their money back and we could have carried on trading. The council's got a lot to answer for," he said.

The council is the organisation most likely to bail out the community association - if members agree to close the bar and concentrate on playschemes, bingo and pensioners' lunch clubs. Tricia Ormiston-Kilsby, head of leisure policy for the city council, told the Oxford Mail some of the centre's debts had been guaranteed by the council, including some of the debt to Morlands. Morlands confirmed that a meeting with the city council had been arranged for this week.

But the volunteer members of the community association which runs the centre could be personally liable for some of the cash.

A council source said pressure was being put on volunteers to wind up the social committee and bar.

"If not, they could lose their houses. It has serious financial consequences but although we put pressure on them we can't force them to sort it out." Meanwhile, the councillor and the political party who paid less than £4 a week each for a community centre office were doing the centre a favour, it is claimed.

John Tanner, a Labour member of Oxford City Council and a member of Oxford East Labour Party's executive, said: "I think the community centre were happy with that price and I think it was as much a favour to the community centre as it was to Bryan Keen and the Labour Party."

Mr Tanner added that if it was proved Donnington Community Centre had under-charged for the room the Labour Party would consider paying the difference between the market rent and the rent charged.

Mr Keen, Labour city councillorfor Iffley, splits the £400-a-year rent with the local Labour Party and runs a small printing firm from the office.

He prints election material for the Labour Party, and furniture and equipment from the party's former office in Cowley Road is also stored at the Donnington office.

Mr Tanner said: "I understand it is a very small and poky room and it seemed to the centre to be a fair price. There was no question of favouritism."

He also stressed that the debt-ridden community centre would not close, although Oxford City Council, which owns the building, is insisting that it wind up its bar.

Lord Mayor Bill Baker, another Labour city councillor and chairman of the community association which runs the centre, denied it was dominated by the party's supporters.

The centre was the venue for MP Andrew Smith's celebration after holding on to Oxford East for Labour in May.

He said: "If the Conservative club wanted to hire the hall and pay for it they could have it. There are several meetings that the Labour Party go to but everything is paid for."

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