Hundreds call to save outdoor education centre
Friends of High BorransMore than 900 people have signed a petition to save a council-owned outdoor education centre.
North Tyneside Council said High Borrans Outdoor Education Centre in Windermere, Cumbria, would shut in November citing a £3m maintenance bill and a reported decline in school children attending the facility.
The petition said it was an "invaluable educational resource" which had changed lives for generations.
The Labour-led council's director of children's services Rebecca Wall previously said: "The level of investment required to maintain and modernise the centre, alongside the ongoing subsidy needed to support each visit, means it is no longer financially viable."
The Friends of High Borrans charity called on the council to reconsider closing the estate which had been an outdoor education centre since 1967.
It said, over the decades, thousands of young people growing up on North Tyneside had benefited from trips there.
Its petition statement read: "The value of High Borrans cannot be measured simply in financial terms.
"It should instead be measured by the lives it has changed, the confidence it has built, the futures it has unlocked and the generations of young people who have carried those experiences into adulthood."
Recent attendance figures indicated the centre had been used by 1,255 pupils from Years 5 to 8, out of a potential cohort of 9,300, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.
Wall said, like councils across the country, it was also facing "significant financial pressures".
She said the decision was made after a "detailed review of its usage, costs and long-term sustainability".