AN appeal is to be launched soon for public support to improve one of Ludlow's most well-used community and conference centres.

It will ask for a 95 per cent contribution from the community to the capital cost of work expected to amount to near £1.5million to the Bishop Mascall Centre.

An appeal development officer is to be appointed and a small proportion of funding will also be channelled towards work on environmental aspects of the project.

Centre director George Reiss said: "The high usage of the centre in recent years has taken its toll, so if we do not renew the main building we will spiral downwards with poorer premises, fewer users and high maintenance bills.

"For this reason plans for re-development of the centre have been under consideration for a number of years."

For the past 25 years the building has been a community and conference centre dedicated to bringing people together in "caring and creative ways".

He explained the building, founded on a Christian education bequest, had been catering for all kinds of meetings from residential weekends to individual counselling.

The aim now was to enhance the facilities of the building improving the layout, increasing residential accommodation by 50 per cent and bringing access up to the standard required by the Disability Discrimination Act.

It was also planned to improve the environmental aspect of the premises and safeguard the eight full-time equivalent jobs, as well as providing six new jobs in future.

Mr Reiss said that at the end of the project he hoped to have a building that was "very available" to people in the community with good catering and well-run facilities.

He added the idea was for the centre to be used by people of all ages and all walks of life for as wide a range of activities as was now the case.

Outline planning permission was given for the project in 2001 and a feasibility study has been suggested to look at ways of reducing cost and to study market need, funding and environmental issues.