Will Fitzgerald, chief executive of Teignmouth Community Association, Kingsway Meadow Centre, Kingsway, Teignmouth, writes:

I was disappointed and saddened to read the letter from Cllr Clarance in your newspaper last week as he attempted to justify Devon County Council's decision not to continue to fund the highly successful youth inclusion programme in the town.

His letter completely misses the point about the provable benefits that such a well coordinated project brings not only for the West Teignmouth area but to the whole town itself.

The fact that all the agencies he mentions – police, community support officers, the anti-social behaviour team together with Connexions, schools, social welfare agencies and residents – have all fully supported and participated in the scheme seems to have completely bypassed the councillor.

Unfortunately – and this is why I'm particularly disappointed – Cllr Clarance then goes on and completely misrepresents the commercial and social contribution that Teignmouth Community Association (including its talk training department and the Eastcliff Centre/The Pulse) is making to the town and the area. He claimed that in the last 'five or six years' we have 'received more than £2million from various public bodies'. I would like to remind Cllr Clarance again – as he has previously visited the Meadow Centre for a briefing – that this income of approximately £300,000 a year is in large part received as contracts that TCA delivers to provide training, employment, educational and social facilities for people of all ages living in Teignmouth. Further, these activities therefore provide full and part-time employment for more than 30 staff, nearly all of whom come from the Teignmouth and immediate area.

These contracts from organisations like South Devon College, the Big Lottery Fund, Sure Start, Barclays Bank, Connexions etc – as well as DCC – bring significant money into the Teignmouth economy.

As both a charity and a limited company we constantly strive to help local people improve their employability skills as well as helping local employers provide subsidised staff training opportunities to improve their competitiveness.

I do not need to emphasise the other huge contributions that TCA brings to people of all ages from parents and toddlers, youth clubs, training projects, unemployed young people and adults through to healthy living activities and much more. The Meadow Centre is widely used as a venue for social events, children's birthday parties, intergenerational bingo, music practice sessions, the Teignmouth Majorettes etc – and it is also used as a place of worship by a church every Sunday.

It's an interesting point that at the Ice Factory in the centre of town we not only provide an E2E Project for local unemployed young people – we also provide the venue in Teignmouth for Devon Youth Service to work from.

Therefore I am saddened that despite my attempts to personally explain the scale, size and contribution that TCA makes to Teignmouth's economic and social cohesion strategies to Cllr Clarance he can still see fit to imply that we are a 'short term fix'.

We are nothing of the sort – TCA is a well established and wide-ranging community association which has been in existence for more than 15 years and is always motivated by a committed determination to help improve life for all of the town's residents whatever their ages.THIS AND OTHER LETTERS IN OUR ONLINE EDITION