COMMUNITY groups making up the Save Whitchurch Civic Centre campaign have welcomed hundreds of new signatures of support to their efforts last weekend.

The group set up on the Bullrings – where Green End and the High Street meet – on Saturday, April 13, to encourage more support from town residents and further afield to back their hopes to avoid knocking down the building because of the reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (Raac) crisis.

Currently, there is a working party made up of Shropshire and Whitchurch Town Council members on six options to bring a new building to the town.

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However, Gregory Ebbs – a Whitchurch councillor and co-organiser of the movement – says that they will continue to demonstrate against plans to knock down the building, which he says would have a catastrophic impact on the town.

“This isn’t a council-led campaign but a collection of different groups all wanting the same,” he said.

“It’s a mixture of groups led by people like Steve Chapman and other members of Blackberry Fair and myself, among others.

“It was a really supportive day for us – I think we have more than 4,000 signatures overall, from the 3,000 or so from Clare Bellingham’s petition and I think we picked up 300 or 400 more on Saturday.

“One of our Shropshire councillors Tom Biggins came down to support the event and he spoke to a lot of people too.

“The general feeling from the day was that the public supports us and they were really positive.

“We want to keep key services going at the Civic Centre – if you knocked it down for a smaller building then it will cause issues.

“Events like Blackberry Fair wouldn’t be able to happen – Steve would tell you that himself – and that’s part of the reason why we want to keep the Civic Centre as it is.

“Our MP Helen Morgan thinks she might be able to get funding from the government so it’s our job with this demonstration to make her job easier.

“We also need to keep questioning the quotes states for the Raac repairs.”

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The demonstration was well supported with plenty of signatures on Saturday.

A decision date on what path the working party will set out for the future of the Civic is yet-to-be decided.

However, Shropshire Council announced last month it is considering a number of options.