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Haverhill Town Council is to be given a second opportunity to bid for control of the Arts Centre, before a final decision is made on it’s future in January.
Haverhill members bitterly opposed a move at St Edmundsbury Borough Council's Leisure Committee to slash arts programming at the centre and encourage more private hire to raise cash,
The committee is proposing a range of drastic cuts to avoid the predicted £400,000 deficit in leisure spending.
The committee agreed a recommendation to prepare revised estimates for January based on the original programming policy for the centre, allowing arts events and private hire bookings.
However an amendment was agreed inviting Haverhill Town Council to make an alternative bid for managing the centre once the revised estimates are available. Its original bid based on a grant of "202,000 was rejected as not giving enough savings to the borough.
Cuts of £12,000 in the current financial year were agreed as part of the overall budget, meaning there will be less programming of art's events at the Centre between January and April.
Gerry Kiernan, a borough and town councillor, said inadequate information has been provided to show how savings could be made. Figures showed how cash saved by not putting on programmes, but did not take account of the loss of income.
"The main problem is that the private functions such as weddings are always going to want Friday or Saturday nights and if you cannot programme arts events on those nights it will be very hard to make it pay.
"We think the town council could make savings and most of our events have 80 per cent or 100 per cent attendance. Hopefully, we will still be able to save it as an Arts Centre rather than just a function hall,
"The borough council is in crisis, it really has become quite series.
"So may people are leaving including key staff and leisure services seems to be totally demoralised," Coun Kiernan said.