Jubilant Addiscombe residents are celebrating victory in the battle to save a much-loved community and youth centre.

Councillors threw out controversial plans to rebuild the Sir Philip Game Centre in Morland Road, with two thirds of the land sold off for housing, at a meeting on Thursday.

Now Addiscombe councillors who supported the hundreds of residents determined to scupper the plans have unveiled a long-term strategy to inject new funds into the cash-strapped centre.

Councillors Jerry Fitzpatrick and Sean Fitzsimons said this week that lottery cash and a fund-raising drive spearheaded by the centre's famous boxing "old boys" Frank Bruno and Duke MacKenzie could save the centre.

Coun Fitzsimons said: "The defeat of the planning application means re-birth for Sir Philip Game, not death. The people of Addiscombe will now unite to ensure that the youth centre is saved for community use, not lost to yet another infill housing scheme."

Trustees at the centre had said that the plan to re-build the dilapidated centre and sell off the rest of the land was the "only viable option" if the club was to survive.

But residents pleaded with councillors to turn the scheme down. Lesley Hastings from the Morland Park Residents' Association said in a three-minute presentation that the plans would wipe out one of the last open spaces in Addiscombe and only add to the traffic and parking problems in the area.

Now councillors are expected to meet the centre's chairman Peter Holt-Thomas to thrash out a way of keeping it afloat.'

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