A popular dance and stage school has dramatically quit its Dawley premises, leaving parents and councillors in the dark.
The founders of Telford Stage School, who have run classes at Dawley Town Hall for the last eight years, have handed back the keys to the building.
And in another twist to the on-going row over extending use of the town hall, parish councillors claim that since exclusively taking over the hall, TSS hasn’t paid a penny in rent.
Parish councillors contacted the Journal this week to say they were having to shoulder the blame for the school’s decsion to ship out. They revealed they had received complaints from pupils and parents turning up to class only to find the hall closed.
Dawley Councillor Adrian Williams, a trustee for Admaston House in Wellington, said he believed the school had been in negotiations with trustees with a view to starting classes there.
In a statement to the Journal, he and Councillor Vic Tonks said it was never the council’s intention to see the school leave Dawley.
“What we wanted to do was set up a charitable trust to take over the running of the town hall thereby giving access to lottery funds in order to carry out refurbishment and improvement.
“Forcing Telford Stage School to leave was never part of the plan, in fact we wanted to keep them there and have consistently said so.
“However Telford Stage School were already in negotiations with owners of other premises in order to move their business and thus last week without any warning they handed in their keys to Dawley Town Hall to Telford & Wrekin Council and – apparently without letting their clients know either – moved elsewhere.
“We councillors have since had people ringing and emailing complaining that the hall has been closed by us without warning when nothing could be further from the truth.”
During investigations by councillors last year to bring Telford’s only town hall back into community use it was discovered the Stage School had not been paying rent since it took over the building in 2002.
The councillors said: “We were surprised to learn while making these inquiries that no rent had been paid for eight years and any income from sub-letting had gone to Telford Stage School.”
When the Journal contactd Lee Baldwin yesterday she refused to comment and said to contact her landlords Telford & Wrekin Council.
A Telford & Wrekin spokesman said: “The lease in question was put together eight years ago.”