A TRAINING facility in Minehead for health and social care workers is faced with closure because not enough people have taken up places.

The training base shares the former Seahorse Centre, in Stephenson Road, where the town’s police station is now located.

It was set up three years ago as a satellite post for a £19.7 million new health and social care academy in a former Bridgwater community hospital in partnership with Somerset NHS Foundation Trust.

Somerset Council’s executive was told the Minehead site could close in the near future due to a lack of uptake of the training on offer.

Council chief executive Duncan Sharkey said it would be financially damaging to persist with a business model which had not delivered desired outcomes.

Mr Sharkey said: “What we are saying is if the model we have tried to roll out is not working for local people, or the council, and it is not financially viable, we have to be honest and say ‘we did try that way, it has not delivered what we wanted it to do, so that needs to stop, and then we need to look at what we do next’.

“We are not giving up, and we continue to work with a whole range of different partners in the Minehead area.

“We need to find a different way of addressing the need.”

But, Conservative opposition group leader Cllr Diogo Rodrigues said closing the Minehead site would be a ‘colossal mistake’.

Cllr Rodrigues said: “I have seen reports and strategies that recognise the elderly population in West Somerset and the need to attract more people to work in health and social care.

“Part of making West Somerset attractive for health and social care workers is having training facilities on their doorstep, rather than them having to travel miles and miles to get the training they need.”