Debden Community Association claims closure of Loughton Sports Hall ruined it

Debden Community Association's 60 year history with Loughton Sports Hall ended earlier this year after owner's Epping Forest College agreed in principal to sell the building off to help ease its debts.

The DCA was asked to leave the hall in February while it was cleared of asbestos.

College interim principal Jeannie Wright told the Guardian the DCA had been offered the opportunity to come back and use the building again until Christmas when it would be sold off in a £1.75million deal to turn it into a private care home.

She said: “There were asbestos problems and we paid a significant amount of money to put that right. The DCA haven't felt the need to use it so I'm not understanding what the problem is.”

She added: “I'm going to be controversial here, but many of the people who were using it were not local at all.”

But DCA chairman Roger Davis said all the clubs who had previously used the venue, in Borders Lane, Loughton, had now moved on to other areas.

He said: “They closed the hall on the pretext of health and safety and we were left out for three months. All the activities had found somewhere else to go. To take up their offer wasn't really viable. People wouldn't be prepared to come back. They have killed the DCA. It's an appalling way to be treated after 60 years.”

The college is currently in a significant amount of debt after completing its £35million new building earlier this year.

Mrs Wright said the college's finances were manageable, but admitted initial plans to build a new sports hall had been permanently shelved as the Government had now pulled its grant program.

She said: “Those projects are simply not going to happen. The money isn't there. That's nothing to do with us.”

DCA president Colin Harris said: “They've cost us a lot of members by closing the hall down. As far as I'm concerned it's all about money. It's killed off all the old age pensioners' activities at a stroke.”