“Big Society” celebrated by Langley community

The two Community Centres which cater for the population of Langley, came together on Friday (8 October) to celebrate the work that their volunteers do.

The Mayor, Councillor Zulfiqar Ali presented people with certificates of achievement and appreciation.

Ann Jones, treasurer of the Burnside Youth and Community Centre stated that they had come together with Demesne Community Association to do this at this particular time because they are concerned about what may happen to their funding in the imminent next round of spending cuts and the drastic effect this could have on their work.

“Burnside and Demesne complement each other in that Demesne has more of a focus on older people whilst Burnside has, for many years, worked hard with groups of young people, some of whose behaviour can be quite challenging at times.

“Heavy cuts to our funding would mean much reduced support and services for people of all ages across the estate. We could see higher instances of anti-social behaviour and experience a negative impact on the well being of our users.”

Middleton and Heywood MP Jim Dobbin who also attended, talked about the fact that statutory organisations could not do the kind of work that Community Centres do.

The evening was fun and lively with slide shows showing the continuous work that takes place across the estate amongst all age groups.

Before a disco, staff and volunteers performed a rhyming play, which expressed the dilemma of having to make hard decisions about spending against the needs of the community. They rounded off with a song about the “Big Society”.

Ann Jones commented: “People are finding it hard to define what the Big Society actually is. We here on Langley believe that we have been the Big Society in action for over four decades but we need our funding in order to continue in our work.”