The centre is due to close in July after only East Renfrewshire, one of four user councils, opted to continue funding. But talks with Argyll and Islands Enterprise are likely to save the centre.

Officials are considering a trust or a management buy-out by a local authority consortium and are putting together a business plan to be discussed by the four councils on June 4. Inverclyde, Renfrewshire and Argyll and Bute are the three others involved.

Scottish Nationalists on Renfrewshire’s education committee last week accused Labour of a lack of commitment to the centre but Shelagh Rae, the council’s director of education, replied that interest in its facilities had declined. The centre’s Pounds 280 a week charge, of which parents pay Pounds 95, was not far off the cost of a foreign trip, Mrs Rae said.