CAMPAIGNERS on a Darlington estate have launched an urgent bid for European money after plans for a community centre hit a funding crisis.

Work on a £1.2m community centre in Firthmoor was due to start last month, but stalled after organisers discovered a £250,000 shortfall in funding.

Now an application for the shortfall amount has been made to the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).

In the meantime, construction work has started on the site in Burnside Road and community leaders have promised the centre will be built whether or not the European grant is made.

Neighbourhood manager Sally Forth said: "We are confident we are going to get the money, but we do have a contingency plan just in case.

"The building can be built to a lesser specification. Basically, if we get the funding, we get the exact centre we want. If we don't, we still have £1.2m for a new centre."

She said the shortfall was discovered when developers submitted tenders for the site.

"It's not that the original estimate was wrong, it is simply that in the time it took to get all the funding package together prices had risen," she said.

"We were hoping to hear whether we had the ERDF funding by the end of April but there has been a slight delay and they have asked for a little bit more information about how the money will be spent."

Ward councillor Roderick Francis said he was sure the centre would still be open by December.

"The people on the estate are well informed about what's happening. We just have to get the centre built and then we can project for the future and extend if we need to," he said.

The centre is a joint project between the Firthmoor Community Partnership Board and Darlington Borough Council.

It is part of a multi-million pound regeneration programme for the estate.

Services at the centre will include health provision, a playschool, education programmes, a caf, a youth club and a credit union.