I was first introduced to the agency in 1988, several years after it had been established by Clwyd County Council to provide help to our townspeople. Over more than two decades, the agency has steadfastly kept to its duties, outliving several changes of local authority and growing to serve Denbighshire as a whole.
For my own part, I, with others, was pioneering a new kind of adult community education that was especially available to people from all walks of life. This was to become known as Drome, expanding over the next decade to serve all of Clwyd, looking after 2500 students a year, and eventually taken up by all the Further Education Colleges of the county, including, vitally for Rhyl, Llandrillo College.
Drome's philosophy and practice has now been absorbed into our further education system, opening up education to the thousands of people who really needed it.
But this may well have not happened without the support of the Community Agency. After its first three years, the scheme's council subsidy ran out, and despite its success, the whole project was in serious jeopardy. The Community Agency took the project within its walls and kept it afloat until the colleges piled in.
But this is just one example. There are so many others. In one sense the magnitude of the potential lessening of the Agency makes this letter an awe-inspiring effort, but in another sense the matter is very simple. If all those, like ourselves, have been helped and guided over the years would contact AM Anne Jones, and MP Chris Ruane, or the editors of our two esteemed local newspapers, then this lamentable action may be arrested, or even reversed.
Indeed, it can be pointed out that the decision is being made at a time when the whole country is moving towards the strengthening of community responsibility.
MALCOLM JONES
Brookdale Road,
Rhyl.