St Ive parish councillors have voted, at an extraordinary meeting held earlier this month, to add £18,000 to the local precept to cover the losses of Millennium House at Pensilva - projected to be £24,000 during the next financial year.

Parish council chair, David Tucker, told council members that since the original precept meeting the council had been visited by the District Audit, who strongly advised them to add an amount to the precept to cover Millennium House, the leisure/community centre built with Millennium Commission funding etc. It was said help was unlikely from either the Commission or Caradon and a charitable trust would not consider taking over the House until it is breaking even.

A proposal that a subsidy be put on to the precept for the operating expense of Millennium House was carried by six votes to two, with four abstentions. Later a proposal that £18,000 is added as £24,000 was felt to be too much, received a split vote of six for and six against. The chair used his casting vote to push the proposal through.

A business plan for Millennium House is to be produced for the District Audit by February 20, with three councillors forming a business plan committee. Under discussions at the meeting regarding ideas for such a plan it was said that improved control systems were needed, as well as guidelines on pricing.

It was felt security could be covered by volunteers in the evening, the coffee bar situation could possibly move downstairs or replaced with machines.

One councillor, Dee Scott, calculated that if certain measures were put in place a saving of £19,400 could be made, but it was felt that £14,000 seemed to be a more realistic figure. There were suggestions that an outside company could take over, with the only cost to the council being payment for a manager, but it was thought that this might be considerably more than what would be covered by the precept.