A SCANDAL-HIT community centre committee is to be wound up with debts of £70,000 - mostly to a brewery - the Oxford Mail can reveal.

A confidential report by Oxford City Council officers recommends that Donnington Community Centre's social committee, responsible for running the bar there, should be wound up. It also says the city council's consent to the sale of alcohol at the centre should be withdrawn.

It is understood that £50,000 of the £70,000 debt is to Morlands brewery, Abingdon, which lent the centre £98,000 to build a new extension. The loan was approved by the city council, which owns the building in Townsend Square, off Donnington Bridge Road.

Lord Mayor of Oxford Bill Baker became chairman of the centre's community association, responsible for running the building and hiring it out for functions, about 18 months ago. He is also a member of the social committee and defended the Morlands deal, saying the city council had approved it at the time and would not lose by it.

He said: "The council have still got a £98,000 extension. The council signed and approved the deal as far as I'm aware and I know that it was all signed and sealed and delivered with the legal people involved." The officers' report was considered behind closed doors by the city council's leisure committee on Monday. It recommended that the council's head of legal services and head of financial services should respond to Morlands as required. It is believed the city council may have gone beyond its powers in approving the loan from the brewery.

The report was written after an independent accountant had investigated the centre's troubled finances. He was called in when the city council paid the community centre's electricity bill, worth up to £1,000, for January and February.

That crisis arose because £1,000 had gone missing from the centre's accounts, as the Oxford Mail revealed in January.

Cllr Baker blamed the debts on the previous management team who, he said, did not understand and had not paid things like VAT and National Insurance contributions.

When the scandal emerged, Cllr Baker said the debts amounted to just £2,000. He said then the centre was in no danger of closure. Rent deal broke guidelines A LABOUR city councillor is paying less than £4 a week to rent an office at Donnington Community Centre - in defiance of charity guidelines.

Cllr Bryan Keen, member for Iffley, runs a small printing business from the centre and pays half the £400 a year rent. The other half is paid by the Oxford East Labour Party.

He said: "The business started out as the Labour Party and was for them. From about two months ago I'm doing it under my own steam but it's just (materials) for the local election."

Ann Black, chairman of Oxford East Labour Party, said: "It's £400 a year for something that's more of a store room than a working space."

Donnington Community Centre is owned by Labour-controlled Oxford City Council and run by a community association as a voluntary, charitable organisation.

It is expected to abide by Charity Commission guidelines.

A spokesman for the commission said charitable organisations were allowed to rent out space they had no use for.

"But it should normally be the going rent, otherwise they are subsidising a non-charitable body," he added.

According to estate agents Adkin, the annual rent for offices in east Oxford is about £10 per sq ft.

He added: "Say the office was 200 sq ft in size, the rent would be £2,000 per annum. £400 is on the low side, on the very, very low side.

"That does sound like a bit of a bargain.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.