A COMMUNITY health project says it will be forced to close if Bradford Council axes its funding next month.

Holme Wood-based Healthy Lifestyle is one of 24 community health projects which face having their funding pulled to save £1m from Council budgets.

The social enterprise runs preventative health programmes such as diet courses, cook-and-eat sessions, a project supporting children’s mental health in schools, exercise classes and a wellbeing cafe for people with dementia.

Organisers say this saves the NHS many thousands of pounds every year by preventing people from developing serious illnesses, but that if its £95,000 annual grant is pulled they will be forced to close this spring.

Yesterday, staff, volunteers and service users held a demonstration against the plans, waving placards outside their base in Tong Street.

Healthy Lifestyle director Julie Wakefield said: “Remove all this powerful preventative work and this will invariably lead to more strain on other health services, so it simply doesn’t make sense. There will also be far-reaching consequences in the communities we serve, where life expectancy is eight years lower than some of the more affluent areas of the district.”

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Fellow director Sharon Rushworth said they worked hard to attract funding from other sources, and the regular Council grant helped to support this by paying for the overheads.

She said: “We appreciate that the council has few choices left and cuts have to be found and we could probably soldier on with a reduced grant - but the proposal is to cut us off completely.”

Service user Simon Whitby, 48, said: “I came on board with Healthy Lifestyle 18 months ago when I got a call inviting me to attend a healthy living programme.

“As well as losing weight, through attending this I got involved and saw and met people who were lonely. I found this was an area which really concerned me.

“I ended up volunteering and helping to raise money to support these very isolated people - and believe me there are loads of them round here.

“I helped to organise a Three Peaks walk which 10 of us completed, raising money for activities for isolated people.

“I can’t believe the council are considering withdrawing the funding which keeps Healthy Lifestyle going. It’s diabolical. There is nothing around here quite like it.”

Bradford Council has already agreed £24m of cuts for 2017/18, but now needs to save a further £14m for this year and £18m for the year after.

Coun Val Slater, deputy leader of Bradford Council and portfolio holder for health and wellbeing, said: “We are having to make a lot of difficult decisions in the light of having to slash £82m from our budget by 2020.

“We’ve already had to find more than £250m in savings and additional income over the past six years, so we have fewer options open to us with each passing year of central government cuts to our district.

“In these proposals we’ve done our best to focus on where we can have the biggest impact and achieve the best outcomes. Caring for the elderly and looking after vulnerable children continues to take up a large part of the council budget and the demands increase, while the resources diminish.

“We are faced with very difficult choices but we are in a consultation period and we will listen to all feedback. Different groups each with their own valuable causes will rightly make their views known and will put forward their case for a shrinking pot of money.

“Our focus is on achieving the best for people across the district with severely reduced funding.”

A public consultation seeking people’s views on its latest budget proposals closes on Sunday, February 12.

To take part, visit www.bradford.gov.uk/budget.

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