AFTER 11 years of bringing the elderly community together, Toothill Lunch Club is no more.

Yesterday diners and volunteers turned out for one last meal of bangers and mash at Toothill Community Centre.

For more than a decade, the project, funded through a variety of grants, has provided lunch every Wednesday for the elderly.

The costs of hall hire, food wastage and a chef have ultimately ground down resources, and the club has run at a loss for the past 12 months.

Gail Light, Swindon Borough Council’s locality facilitator for West Swindon, said finding chefs had proved difficult, as well as keeping enoughcommittee members.

The club’s most recent chef handed in her notice after receiving a better offer to work in a professional kitchen, underlining the problems the club had in competing with private sector salaries.

“People just stopped coming. We thought it was transport, but it didn’t really work out that way. We had a few more extra coming with the bus,” Gail said.

One of the volunteers at the last supper was Phill Harrison, who has been helping out at the lunch club for the past two years.

He blames the club’s closure on a lack of publicity.

He says word of its existence has not reached enough elderly people.

He said the club had been ticking over with 12 or 13 regular diners, but at its peak there would be more than 30 being served.

Phill was particularly disappointed with yesterday’s outcome because he suffers from syncope, a condition which means he can pass out when he coughs, and also prevents some employers taking him on.

“I’m devastated. No one wants to hire me because of the condition I have and most places don’t want me to volunteer, but to be given the chance to make myself useful was priceless,” he said.

“People need to get together and get it back because it’s a great service for the community.”

Gail has said there will still be a group going at The Windmill pub in Freshbrook every Wednesday for lunch, but it will not be a formal club with subsidised prices.

The bus which usually picks up diners for the Toothill Lunch Club will continue to ferry them to the pub.

For more information, or to help in resurrecting the lunch club, telephone Gail on 01793 466223.