A YOUTH project that supports vulnerable young people faces closure after its pleas for council funding were rejected.

SMASH, a mentoring scheme which has helped troubled teenagers turn their lives around, had asked for an emergency cash injection to keep it going until November.

But yesterday the ruling Conservatives decided the project did not meet the council's funding criteria and rejected proposals to award it £35,000.

The decision went against advice from council officers. Their report said: "SMASH carries out a valuable role which fits in well with wider objectives of the council in tackling crime and social exclusion."

Now, unless SMASH can find money from other sources by the end of next month it is likely to fold.

Rebecca Rice, SMASH's project director, said the 30 young people who were on the mentoring scheme and the 30 on the waiting list would suffer as a result.

"The council is willing to lose a project that has attracted national and European acclaim," she said.

"We will continue to fight for survival and we invite individuals and local businesses to support us on a month-by-month basis to enable us to apply for government grants."

SMASH, which was set up in 1999, has never been funded by the council, and has depended on support from the Youth Justice Board and later the European Social Fund.

When this money dried up last October the group approached the council for help.

Yesterday's decision was opposed by Labour and Liberal Democrat members.

Labour leader David Nash said: "The Tories have refused to give the project a £35,000 lifeline out of a budget of £181 million.

"There was a very strong chance they would have got European funding in November but now they probably won't be around to bid for it.

"This is a poor reflection on the Tories' supposed focus on community safety."

Deputy Lib Dem leader Wendy Johnson said: "SMASH is a very valuable service that gives just the support disaffected young people need. It is pretty short-sighted to jeopardise this provision."

Council leader Mike Bawden accepted that the group did "good work", but said its business plan and the type of people the project made contact with did not meet the criteria to qualify for a grant.

"We don't have unlimited resources, and if we had given money to them we would have had to take it away from another," he said.

"The borough has never directly funded them and we are not taking anything away from them, but we are not filling their funding gap."

Coun Bawden said the council would be seeking to identify other organisations whose national or European funding was about to expire in order to discuss their future with them.

'I'm very angry at decision'

Teenager Lyza-Jane Hollands, who credits SMASH with saving her from a life of crime, said a lot of people would be angry about the council's decision not to fund the project.

"They always complain that kids are going round causing vandalism and breaking into cars, but they are taking away the one thing that can help them get off the streets and do something productive," said the 18-year-old, who this week joined the group's board as a youth rep. "If they're not willing to help the kids, they haven't got the right to complain."

Lyza-Jane, who admits to having been a difficult teenager in the past, said she was able to turn her life around with the help of a SMASH mentor.

"I'm very angry at the decision and I know a lot of other people will be too," she said.

Andy Tate