A CONSORTIUM that has pulled about £2m into Teesdale over the seven years it has been in operation is struggling to survive in its present form, due to changes in funding.

But at a meeting of Teesdale Village Halls Consortium at Barningham Village Hall on Monday, members of the management committees, representing 31 halls in the dale, voted unanimously that the consortium must continue in some shape or form.

Co-ordinator Ann Johnstone said it had come into being with the advent of the availability of European Objective 5b money. Other cash had also been forthcoming from the Rural Development Commission, now the Countryside Agency, which went directly to village halls, with the consortium acting as administrative body - a system that had worked effectively as the most sensible way of accessing funding. Most of the £2m came from outside Teesdale, and most has been spent in Teesdale.

"Objective 5b money is now finished," said Ms Johnstone, who will lose her job when funding for her post runs out at the end of March, although the consortium wants to keep her on until May. "There is money available through Objective 2 but it is not for the same areas," she added.

But she was as much concerned that the consortium should continue as she was about her job. A written survey was to be carried out to see what could be done to meet future needs.

The consortium still had a much smaller fund for improvements to access halls. This did not just cover things like ramps for the disabled, but included loop systems for the hard of hearing and developing publicity.

The consortium would continue to run training courses, provide access to its resource library and to be involved with TAPIT - Technology Access for People in Teesdale. But as well as looking at alternative sources of funding, it would also have to think of an exit strategy from projects it could no longer fund at a time when everybody was still rocked by what Teesdale had had to deal with over the last year.

"That there is less support in future has come as a bit of a shock, when what they want to hear is that there is more support," said Ms Johnstone. "Maybe it is time for a change. There are funders out there, but they want to be sure what the consortium is aiming to do, that it is meeting the needs of its members and to some extent changes.

"But if it has to rely totally on volunteers then it will have to reduce the amount it is able to do.