Marlon speaks of his ‘family’ in the Comets

4:57pm Thursday 11th October 2007

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A 15-year-old steel drum player has spoken about how a police-backed community scheme currently under threat has turned his life around.

Marlon Hibbert joined the Comets Community Project after he was taken in by his foster mum, Rose Bartlett - a long standing supporter of the scheme for many years.

“I joined the Comets just after that and since then everything has changed, my life is so much better and I am doing a lot better at school. They have become my family and I am not sure how I would have coped without them.”

Marlon Hibbert

The Croydon Guardian reported last week how the council was looking at accomodation elsewhere because of increasing numbers of complaints from neighbours.

However, the Comets are furious and say they are going nowhere after spending £25,000 of their own money to refurbish the building, £5,000 of which was a gift from the National Lottery.

And Marlon, a student at the Harris Academy, said that without the help and support of the "family" he has at the group his life could be a dramatically different story.

He explains: "When I was living with my mum I was not well fed or well clothed and my mother physically abused both me and my two sisters. She eventually kicked me out of home last year and I came straight to Rose's.

"I joined the Comets just after that and since then everything has changed, my life is so much better and I am doing a lot better at school. They have become my family and I am not sure how I would have coped without them."

The Comets Community Project has been using the Auckland Road pavilion for almost six years but since the council cut down the hours in which they are allowed to practise, they have lost more than 40 members.

Musical director, David Wellecomme, is outraged and says that he and project manager Gina Sheridan - along with the rest of the committee who are all volunteers - have offered countless suggestions to reduce the noise, including soundproofing the front windows, which they claim will reduce the noise by 85 per cent.

He said: "We have put our lives into this project and when we arrived here in 2002 after the council gave us this pavilion it was absolutely disgusting.

"Drug users and vandals had been using the building for years and it was an absolute state. But since then we have put our hearts and souls into making it our own and have spent a fortune on it.

"As far as we are concerned it seems that the council has other plans for the area and using the neighbours complaints as an excuse is an easy way out."

A council spokesman said: "This council fully supports the way the Comets have grown and is exactly the kind of project we wish to encourage.

"It is certainly a possibility that the pavilion could be soundproofed but it is not altogether practical because of the heat in the summer time.

"There is certainly no hidden agenda under this at all and we are doing everything we can to find a solution."