WITNEY’S panto, a spiritualist church, cinema, children’s dance group and many other community organisations are homeless after the town’s main hall was closed indefinitely.

The Corn Exchange in Market Square was shut by Witney Town Council on Thursday after a report found the hall’s heating and ventilation system was in danger of “imminent failure”.

There is no date when it will re-open or even when repairs might start, with its very future now resting on a public consulation into the future of all public halls in the town.

A protest is planned outside the Corn Exchange today by the affected groups to press the council to get repairs started.

Witney Dramatic Society has held plays at the hall for about 65 years but its Christmas panto, Babes In the Wood, is now in doubt.

Member Natalie Mullins said: “At the moment we are frantically trying to find another venue because we have nowhere to put on the show. It is very upsetting.

“None of us received letters to let us know our productions were at risk. We found out through the grapevine.”

Amy Webb, co-owner of The Jill Stew School of Dance, which also uses the hall, said: “We are bitterly disappointed. We were supposed to be holding a choreography competition in the hall next Sunday but that has had to be postponed.

“We had children in floods of tears yesterday when it was announced. They were devastated.”

Witney Spiritualist Church organiser Sue Godden said: “We are gutted. We have held meetings in there every Sunday for the last 26 years. I have every single Sunday already booked next year with mediums to visit, but the council cannot say what is happening.”

John Richards, proprietor of Screen at the Square, the cinema held at the Corn Exchange, said: “At this moment in time we cease to operate.

“It is going to cost us quite a lot of money to recover from this. I have invested in film costs, transport costs and insurance costs.”

Mr Richards said he was now looking for other venues for the cinema, which was due to screen Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy next Monday. He added: “We have been doing Screen at the Square for 14 years. It is like a friend of ours passing away without warning.”

Witney mayor Harry Eaglestone said yesterday: “We had to make this decision because it was liable to become a dangerous hall.

“We could not carry on letting people go in there.

“If something went wrong – a spark from the heating system started a fire – we would be responsible.”

Mr Eaglestone said everyone who had lost money through booking the hall would be reimbursed.

Clerk Sharon Groth said the council received a report about the state of the hall, which was last refurbished in 1978, last week.

It revealed “challenging needs” which would require “a significant amount of public money” to overcome.

She said that public consultation, which will look at all the town’s halls and decide on the Corn Exchange’s future, would start “in due course”.