to steve.bullock@lewisham.gov.uk
cc camerond@parliament.uk,
cleggn@parliament.uk,
effordc@parliament.uk

Hello Mr Bullock,

I understand that given the recent budget cuts that the Playing for Success program in the Lewisham borough is at risk of being closed down.

If this is the case, I would just like to make a plea for it to be kept open.

Every term, around 75 children from the borough, your borough, are taken through a 10 week IT focussed training course, which helps build their confidence in themselves, in these tools and in their education in general. It has been doing this for several years now and the students enjoy it enough that the ones who take the primary version of the course are keen to come back and do the secondary version.

Its not the most perfect training course, its run on a shoestring, largely by volunteers, myself included (sorry, did I disclose I have a personal interest).

It does not solve all problems, for example this term we have had a few of the students drop out of the course because of badgering from their “mates” that it was not “cool” to do the course – but it is something, that some students can attend, can work towards completing – they get certificates presented from the Millwall FC team, at a presentation along with all the other students for that term.

I appreciate these are “tough” and we all need to tighten our belts, but even more so, I feel that closing down programs like this will mean less help for the most at risk in our society.

I look forward to response on this matter.

Regards,
Chris Kimpton