CHRISTCHURCH council says that the town centre does not need a community centre. When my father became a widower, he started to go to a Help the Aged lunch at Druitt Hall, where he found friendship and a new purpose in life.

Loneliness can be hard on all of us, in older ones more so. I feel that his time at the centre helped him to live longer with better quality of life and kept him out of a nursing home longer, which was a saving.

Not all our senior men and women who served our land can dine at the Captain’s Club, golf club etc.

Druitt Hall is what the ‘big society’ is about.

DENIS DALY, Quay Road, Christchurch