Tenby Town Council are to seek a meeting with a county council community regeneration officer to have an update on work the De Valence Trust has been doing to secure grant funding.

The Trust has recently voiced dismay at the decision by the town council to adopt a new grants policy that would see a cap of £5,000 given out to organisations.

Members of the Trust believe that the decision to apply the new policy could seriously jeopardise the future of the venue and also any grant funding that they had been working hard to secure.

Following a further meeting of the town council's De Valence sub-committee held recently to discuss the matter, Deputy Mayor, Clr. Mrs. Julie Evans, said that they should hold a direct meeting with Mr. Alex Allison from county council's community regeneration department to seek vital information on the matter.

Clr. Paul Rapi told his colleagues at a meeting of the town council on Tuesday night that he believed the whole issue needed to be cleared up once and for all, as all the constant discussions were doing was producing bad vibes.

"It's hard for the Trust to make decisions when they are continually being looked at and harassed.

"We agreed to give them the grant package of £35,000, but now we seem to be crippling them to do anything good with it, so we may as well have not given it to them.

"We, the town council, created this Trust, so this is my last plea to sort this out," remarked Clr. Rapi.

Clr. Mrs. Evans stressed that it wasn't harassment, but the town council were entitled to know what was being done with the sum of public money they had given as a grant and that not enough facts had been produced.

"It's six or seven years we've been waiting and we're getting tired of promises. We're just protecting the town's asset and looking after the building. Both parties want to work in the same direction, the town council is not putting up a brick wall, but we do want to see something finally happen," said Clr. Mrs. Evans.

Clr. Mrs. Christine Brown said that both the Trust and town council had made mistakes in the past, but both needed to pull together for the good of the community and see what was the best way forward for the venue.

Meanwhile, Mr. Mike Neal, chairman of the De Valence Trust, responded to recent suggestions that the controversial notice boards located on The Croft and The Esplanade only contained advertisements for De Valence events.

Mr. Neal pointed out in correspondence to the council that he had counted at least five other events advertised in the notice boards.

He also said that people were now more aware of how to get their adverts displayed.

Clr. Mrs. Tish Rossiter suggested that the town council meet with the other organisations that had helped fund the notice boards and "thrash out" where they wanted them relocated, as the issue was becoming a laughing stock and upsetting many people who lived in The Croft area.

Clr. Mrs. Trisha Putwain also wanted a breakdown of the costs of the notice boards at the proposed meeting.