TEENAGERS in Littlemore have finally got a youth club after years without one.

The Littlemore Senior Youth Club — for those aged between 13 and 18 — is now up and running on Monday evenings at the village hall in Railway Lane.

The Littlemore Youth Committee, which was established last year to provide facilities for youngsters, staged a successful playscheme for 360 children in the summer.

And by the end of the year it hopes to have started a junior youth club for pre-teenage children.

The new senior club was launched on Saturday at Littlemore’s Village Hall Day, which saw a working party clear up the hall and its immediate surrounding.

Julian Armitstead, chairman of the village hall committee, said: “We had been meaning to tidy up the outside at the rear of the hall for some time.

“The start of the youth club gave us the opportunity to get young people more involved with their community and where they live.”

The weekly club is run with the help of two youth workers from Oxfordshire County Council and benefits from the hall’s recently-resurfaced car park, which doubles as an all-weather play area, and the installation of a new disabled toilet, a new energy-efficient heating system and a refurbished wooden floor in the main room.

Local city and county councillor John Tanner, the youth committee chairman, said: “Like many of the older village halls in the semi-rural areas around Oxford, the one in Littlemore has been in need of a great deal of remedial work and refurbishment to bring it up to standards now required.

“While some help and funding is available from Oxford city and Oxfordshire county councils, we mainly depend upon people's time, effort and generosity.

“Help from the business sector in the parish, such as companies in the Oxford Science Park, would be really appreciated by the community.

“Littlemore's Senior Youth Club is already starting to get known within the community as somewhere the young people can freely come along to, actively take part in and no longer feel left out in the cold — as was the case for many years.

“It also shows the young people their community, Oxford city and Oxfordshire county councils do actually care about children and young people who live in Littlemore.”

l For more information about the club, which starts at 6.30pm, call 01865 712766.

tairs@oxfordmail.co.uk