GWYNEDD Council has been branded “disgusting” for closing the youth club in Tywyn.

The youth club will close by 1 April, along with other clubs in the area, unless the local council pays to keep it open or volunteers are found to run a replacement service.

It would cost Tywyn Town Council about £8,500 to completely take over provision of the service, and keep it running at its current level but eh council has already set its budget.

Clerk Francesca Pridding told a town council meeting last week that she had received a letter from the county council’s youth service manager Nia Morris saying the club could stay open if the town council funds the service, the town council runs a voluntary service or volunteers run a voluntary service.

Cllr Aled Lewis said: “Gwynedd Council should be ashamed of themselves.

“Youth leaders are the people that kids go to if they feel they can’t approach figures of authority, like teachers.

“It’s where they go for their social, mental, and health purposes. Where they go to share and seek guidance.

“The council are dismissing the future of tomorrow for £270,000 - it’s disgusting.”

Cllr Cathy Evans added: “sometimes the unofficial contact is what the children want.”

Gwynedd councillor Mike Stevens was equally outraged.

“I am shocked and angry at this letter,” he said.

Fellow Gwynedd councillor Cllr Anne Lloyd Jones defended the county council’s stance, adding that she believed remodelling of the service was the best way forward.

Cllr Lloyd Jones added that the town council’s budget for the year had already been set and that spending “£8,500 isn’t an option.

“We want more young people using the youth service, currently it’s a very small percentage of people using it,” she added.

“It would be better to remodel and encourage more people to go every session - hold it in Bryncrug one week, then Tywyn, then Aberdyfi for example.”

The clerk pointed out that although the service was currently not attracting as many youngsters as usual, which councillors said was down to a ‘rough’ group of teenagers.

Tywyn town chair Alun Wyn Evans also expressed concern that the local YFC, which was attended by 20 people every Thursday, was also going to be negatively affected.

The council resolved to ask for a Gwynedd Council representative to come in and discuss matters.

A Gwynedd Council spokesperson said: “The council’s Youth Service has consulted on developing a new way of working to provide services for the county’s young people, by focussing on what young people themselves have said is important to them.

"Due to significant cuts faced by the council in the funding received from the government over recent years, the council will have £270,000 less to spend on its youth services. We accept that any form of change is difficult, but we simply cannot continue without change due to the fact that the current service does not meet the needs of young people and the budget available will be less in future.”