RESIDENTS are being urged to help determine the fate of an underused community hall in a Teesdale village.

Cockfield Community Centre is not being used enough by villagers, so the trustees of the building, the parish council, have arranged a meeting to determine whether people want to use it or lose it.

Cockfield has a variety of other venues for use by the community, with the Lipscome Hall, the Methodist Church hall and the Working Men's Club also available for events.

The community centre, which is in Front Street, Cockfield, has been slowly falling into decline because of a lack of income from regular activities, prompting the parish council to act.

A discussion will now take place at the annual parish meeting next Tuesday, at 7pm, in the community centre.

Pauline Charlton, clerk of Cockfield Parish Council, said: "The centre is just not being really utilised as it could be and we want to ask people what they think.

"If people don't want it, then we want to know that so we can act on it.

"I would like to see it retained and used more by people in Cockfield, but this is a community centre so it should be the community which decides its future."

The centre was formally a United Reformed Church dating from 1898. In 1997, a ground floor extension was constructed to form a small dining room, kitchen and to provide additional toilets.

Last year, through a project with Teesdale Village Halls Consortium, a computer suite was revamped with new computer screens and chairs, and courses in numeracy and literacy took place.

Fergus Arkley, business and development manager for Teesdale Village Halls Consortium, of which Cockfield Community Centre is a member, said: "This is a very precarious situation; the community association needs the support of the community with its use and management or they will have to close.

"It's important for you to attend this meeting to tell us how you feel about the building and if there is the support within the community to keep it open."