THE fight to keep a town's vital service for disabled people continues as it looks ahead to the next few years.

Staff and volunteers at the Barrow and District Disability Association, in School Street, were overwhelmed last year when the town rallied together to secure another two years of funding.

The group's future was hanging in the balance 12 months ago after not being granted continuation funding by the Big Lottery, and it now hopes to secure its future for years to come.

Margaret Burrow, honorary executive officer at the BDDA, said: "This is something that will affect a huge amount of people in the town.

"When we did the first five years we had 15,132 enquiries from whether someone can get a blue badge to helping them get help and benefits.

"If we didn't get the funding we need we'd just cease to exist. With us being able to get that last year it helped us to buy time, but we've still got three years left to fund."

BDDA hopes to secure another £218,132 in funding to cover the cost of running the project between 2019-2021.

They welcomed a number of local councillors last week to thank them for their help so far and discuss plans for the future.

Mrs Burrow said: "If I wasn't doing this then what would be the purpose of waking up in the morning?

"I'm here for the disabled people in this town. We want people to have a better life but this is one of the cruellest times for cutting benefits.

"We've got disabled people offering help from experience and that means we have ideas and empathy that people find so important."

In its first five years, the group has seen £7,006,284 come into the town after enquiries through the service.

Mrs Burrow said: "We've brought millions back into Barrow and these are people who will spend money locally.

"We are a charity and we need to raise the money ourselves. We had to use up our reserves last year to keep running, and we were also lucky to get donations from major trusts, the council, and people we helped years ago coming back.

"It is difficult doing fundraising but we're always looking for people who want to be involved with it."