Village in lottery cash snub

An application to secure £500,000 to help pay for a state-of-the-art community centre in Huntington has been turned down in a big blow for the village.

The application had been submitted to the Big Lottery Fund's Community Buildings Fund last spring.

The refusal has been met with dismay by villagers as the area is in the midst of plans to create a range of new facilities including a primary school, medical centre and village green as part of the development of the old Littleton pit off Stafford Road.

The community centre would have been built on the new village green and was seen as a vital part of the project.

Architects had already penned initial designs for the new centre but those leading the project must now find other ways of finding the cash to foot the £1.25million bill.

Huntington Parish Council has been given 1.5 hectares of land at the former pit by the Coal Authority to create the village green and plans to sell its current community centre site in Stafford Road for housing to raise half a million pounds.

It was hoping the lottery cash would take the total up to the £1million mark.

Councillor Jeff Ashley said: "We will not give up, we will now have to look for other avenues of funding.

"But I cannot pretend we are not disappointed. It is a tragedy for the village and we were confident of securing that grant."