IT WAS a fitting gesture that the final meal served by the Glusburn Luncheon Club should be a Christmas meal, the treat provided thanks to the generosity of a local charity.

However, this cannot disguise the sadness and concern surrounding the end of a service which provided not only meals but also companionship for older people.

If the main problem facing the club related to funding, then there was also the fact that it had been run for many years by volunteers, many of whom probably needed - and deserved - a rest themselves.

That last meal was served in the same week as North Yorkshire County Council officials were warned it may not be realistic to rely too heavily on volunteers to run local libraries. The warning was all the more telling because it came from someone who has been instrumental in running a community library.

It is perhaps inevitable that community self-help will come to play an increasingly important part in our lives.

However, there is always the risk that community-led enterprises can start to weigh too heavily on core individuals. These volunteers shoulder the burden for so long, but if they ever want to step down or take a break there is the danger the venture they have been involved in will be thrown into crisis.

This is bad enough in the case of a village fete or the like, but would be a great deal worse in the case of a major public service.

At the very least our local government leaders must ensure that communities are genuinely ‘enabled’ to take on such tasks, with the resources they need to avoid such pitfalls.