U-turn over day centre closure

Proposals to send day visitors with learning disabilities to centres in Sturminster Newton and Verwood have been scrapped.

But plans for the Blandford Day Care Centre remain unclear, with Dorset County Council's adult care boss describing its main use as "a place where people will assemble".

A consultation exercise to judge the mood of the centre's users and their carers has prompted a change of heart at County Hall.

A spokesman for the council said plans to transfer people away from the centre had been "revised" in the hope of keeping people who already use the centre in the town.

"Following the consultations, plans to transfer people with learning disabilities from Blandford to other day centres have been modified," the spokesman said.

"Instead, the Blandford centre would be used to co-ordinate community-based services for users who live in and around the town," he added.

Steve Pitt, Dorset County Council's director of adult services, said the centre would be used as an assembly point.

"It may be a place where people will assemble, but having assembled there will go to other places in Blandford for activities," said Mr Pitt.

The care boss suggested trips to allotments and arts facilities as the sort of activities to which people would travel from the centre.

"Part of the service for people with learning disabilities is to integrate them into the community," he said.

Mr Pitt added that development of neighbouring residential centre, The Beeches, would include a commercial space to house activities.

Blandford's mayor, Cllr Steve Hitchings, welcomed the change of heart at County Hall.

"But there is still an issue for residents of Dorset as a whole," said Cllr Hitchings.

The parish leader criticised the need to fix a system which in his opinion was not broken.

And Cllr Hitchings pledged to take his council's concerns to a meeting of the county council's influential community overview committee on January 17.