PEOPLE are invited to a public meeting which aims to drum up support for a youth club.

It comes after Dorset County Council agreed to withdraw funding for youth clubs across the county in a bid to save £1m from the youth services budget.

Youth clubs have been invited to submit business plans by the end of March for alternative ways to run the clubs.

Organisers of the meeting tomorrow, Saturday, hope to find out how much support there is for the youth club in Southill.

County councillor David Harris, who has called the meeting along with chairman of local charity Spark Pete Barrow, said: "We have to produce a business plan and the critical issue for us is that the county council have to pay a rent of £5,000 per year to the borough council to rent the land on which the building stands.

"I am hoping to see what flexibility there is in these charges at meetings next week to enable us to build up to that figure over a period as the expectation we can suddenly generate this income, the running costs of the building and the payment of a youth worker in the first year is rather unlikely.

"We hope that as many people as possible will turn out to the meeting on Saturday so that we can see what support there is for providing young people with a facility on a couple of evenings a week whilst the rooms are used by other groups during the day."

He added: "The youth club building will be open for residents to see the facility for themselves as I suspect not many have had the opportunity of looking inside as it is locked up for most of the week. Maybe we can change that and bring the building to life throughout the week.

"The idea also fits with the work of Spark which is our charity trying to improve the facilities of Southill for both young and older people.”

The meeting takes place at the Emmanuel Church from 2pm tomorrow, Saturday.