Building is left to 'rack and ruin'

A community centre abandoned just four years after having more than £240,000 pumped into it has become a playground for thieves and vandals.

Every window at the centre has been smashed and the building ransacked.

Situated behind the West Cannock Sports and Social Club, it has been stripped of valuables with items such as fridges, computers and anything metal being stolen.

Desperate pleas for the building to be secured, they fell on deaf ears after the club went into administration before the summer.

Bundles of documents and folders containing personal details of people who used the centre have also been left strewn across the floor for anyone to find.

Alan Pearce, of Heath Street, in Hednesford, was shocked to hear the details of his 20-year-old daughter Charlotte were left at the centre after she filled out a questionnaire during a training day last year.

He said: "The council or someone should have taken all the paperwork away when it closed."

The Express & Star has discovered the club received at least £240,000 from the Coalfields Regeneration Trust to transform the derelict outbuilding into a community centre in 2004.

Councillor John O'Leary, who cut the ribbon to officially open the centre, said: "I am disgusted about the way it has been allowed to go to rack and ruin."