new toddler group starting in Jan

[nennyrainbow]

Hi
I was quite interested to see that a new toddler group was being started up in the village hall by Downham Market Health Centre on Tuesday afternoons next year. However, I have my doubts about how successful it will be as there used to be one there (run by Surestart so attendance was free) up until March 2006 when it was shut down due to poor attendance. There were only about 10 regulars (mixture of childminders and parents) and I was the only one from the village. When they started charging for the playgroup (£1 per family), the numbers went down further to just 4 of us! I even offered to help run it to keep it going but it just wouldn't have been profitable with that number of attendees. As far as I know, we haven't had a big influx of parents with toddlers into the village so I wondered why they were doing it here. Also, I would point out that there is a very well-run and popular playgroup in Stowbridge on a Tuesday morning (9.30-11.30) which attracts a large number of parents / carers from Downham and surrounding villages so it will be competing with that since I imagine that most people find one playgroup session per day enough.
I hope it does work out as it would be nice to have a playgroup in the village but somehow I'm not very confident on this one. Does anyone know why they're siting it here? Have we got lots of parents with young children in the village?