A FINAL plea for funding to save an under-threat children's project from closure has been issued to Blackbird Leys Parish Council.

Carol Richards, family services co-ordinator at the Dovecote Project in Greater Leys, issued a plea to the council for £5,000 on Tuesday night.

The centre in Nightingale Avenue offers playschemes and after-school care to local youngsters but has only been able to scrape together a sixth of its running costs for 2016.

Mrs Richards said: "We have never received statutory funding and now, 21 years down the line with pressure on funding, we are facing closure in December.

"We would like to apply for an emergency grant of £5,000.

"There are lots of great parents in Blackbird Leys but they don't have the resources to do some of the stuff we do because of the challenges in their lives.

"We also support vulnerable children and families and three children from Mabel Prichard Special School also come to the after-school club."

She added that Dovecote was also hoping to "tap into" a £4m pot of temporary funds from Oxfordshire County Council to pick up on services lost if children's centres close.

At present Dovecote is the only provider for children aged four to eight across the Leys, with 1,653 in this age group in 2013.

It costs £60,000 to run the centre for a year – including salaries of one full-time and two part-time staff – but so far only £10,000 has been gathered this year.

At the start of March Dovecote featured in ITV's The People's Projects in a bid to win £50,000 in Big Lottery funding but failed to get enough votes for a share of the cash.

Oxford city councillors Sian Taylor and Jennifer Pegg, who both represent Northfield Brook, have each offered to match the grant using their own ward funds.

Ms Taylor said: "For Jennifer and I to give £2,500 each, more than a year's worth of our councillor spend, is quite a big deal for us.

"One of the things that we know, unfortunately, is that Northfield Brook is among the 10 per cent most deprived wards in the country.

"We also know that the number of children living in the ward is high, and in 2013 something like 300 local children were living in deprivation.

"These are children whose centres are going and whose youth provision is going.

"They are stuck in the middle and they haven't got parents who can afford to pay for things.

"If Jennifer and I didn't think the project was worth it we wouldn't support this.

"I hope the parish council feels minded to support it."

A decision is likely to be made at the next meeting of the parish council on Tuesday, April 26.