A PLAYGROUP that has been part of Bicester’s community for 25 years faces closure if it cannot raise £200,000 for a new building.

Oxfordshire County Council inspectors have given Rainbow Playgroup just six months to make massive repairs to their dilapidated portable building.

Now staff, children and parents have launched an appeal to raise enough cash to construct a new building in Hendon Place, off Sunderland Drive.

Children will launch the appeal with a walkathon next Monday in Cooper School’s grounds in a bid to start the cash rolling in.

The current building has subsided and its floor is rotten. Committee secretary Roz Edwards said the building was donated to the playgroup about nine years ago and was already 20 years old.

She said: “The council came out and did a report on the safety of the building. It has come back and confirmed it needs a lot of work doing within six months.

“We have two years on the lease which may be extended, but we have to do these repairs and these repairs are big. We don’t know how much it is going to cost. We know there’s a possibility in six months we will have to look for a temporary building or worse, close.

“It would leave a massive gap — and where would 70 children and nine staff go?”

She said the playgroup, a charity, was in talks with nearby Glory Farm School over moving to within its grounds, but Rainbow would still have to fund a new building.

A Save Rainbow Playgroup petition has also been launched in a bid to show the county council the importance of the facility in Bicester.

Mrs Edwards, whose children Katie, six, and Holly, four, both attended the playgroup, is urging families who have used the playgroup to add their support to the petition and walk.

Manager Mandy Zdyrko warned: “The building is very old and falling to pieces.

“In the last six months we have spent thousands of pounds patching it up. When we got the building, it was second hand already. We are hoping to have a brick building.”

Parent Charlotte Roberts, whose son William attends the nursery, said: “He often comes home talking excitedly about what he has done during the day and who he has played with.

“We think it has helped him to become a very clever and confident little boy and we look forward to what he will be learning in the next few months.”

She said her one-year-old daughter was also due to start at the nursery next September, but was concerned it might not be open then.