COSTS for a council-run summer holiday playscheme are set to more than double after it was revealed that its main users were working parents.

Parents in BMWs and four-wheel drive vehicles were dropping children off at the £10 a week scheme in Rossendale this summer because the cost was a fraction of childminding, it was claimed.

Whitworth Coun Alan Neal told the council's leisure committee that working parents were delighted to enrol their children because childminding could cost much more.

A total of 240 children a week used the scheme at eight centres in Rossendale and were charged £10 per family.

Committee chairman Coun Laurence Forshaw said a mother of triplets told him the scheme was a bargain and would still have been a bargain at £50 a week.

Now councillors are recommending a charge of £20 per child, plus the cost of a day trip, with other children in the same family charged £5 each. Playscheme workers will also receive a pay rise to bring them up to at least the recommended minimum wage.

Coun Keith Wright said: "Over the last few years the scheme has moved away from the original idea which was to help less well-off families. These families have not made use of it.

"The families who have used it are working parents who would pay the going rate. A £20 charge is fair. We as a council can't go on subsidising the playscheme."

This summer the usual day trip was axed on cost grounds in favour of a day at Fearns Sports and Leisure Centre in Bacup.

But a report to the committee from playscheme organisers said parents would be willing to pay for a day out at a rate of £8-10 per child.

Now Fearns could be used as an extra playscheme centre for children of eight and over.

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