A £750,000 town centre development could soon be helping young families across Weymouth and Portland.

Surestart, a government-funded initiative established to improve opportunities for young children and their parents, has submitted plans for an extension to Weymouth Arts Centre in Commercial Road.

The futuristic extension would see the charity take over the existing ground floor space with facilities that include creches, play areas and a child care training room.

The first floor - currently one large hall and performance space - would remain as a performance facility that can be divided into three smaller multi-function rooms.

A proposed extension to the first floor would include a spacious bar and caf area.

Surestart Weymouth and Portland programme manager, Carol Pitman, said the Arts Centre had been chosen as a venue for Surestart's central base because of the accessibility it offers.

"We operate in four specific areas, Littlemoor, Melcombe Regis, Underhill and Westham, and have centres in two of them with two more centres coming soon, but we need a base for the staff team."

"The Arts Centre is in exactly the right place in terms of access for bus routes from Littlemoor and Portland and is within walking distance from Melcombe Regis and Westham," she said.

Jacqui Trent, honorary secretary of the Weymouth Arts Centre, the charity that occupies the council-owned building, says the Surestart extension is a good chance to update the building.

"It's not in a very good state of repair and it won't meet the disabled access regulations next year, so we are grabbing it as an opportunity to make the building more up to date."

"There are going to be some downsides with it," warns Jacqui, "It will mean that we have got less space than we have now."

She added that Arts Centre members have been left behind in the planning process.

"I was a little bit upset to say the least that I saw the announcement in the Echo first.

"It's not really the way it should have been done.

"We haven't really had any consultation for the last couple of months, but it's difficult because it's not our building and we're not paying any of the bills," she said.

Mrs Pitman said although Surestart would be putting up the money for the building work, she looked on it as a shared project.

"The intention is to have a partnership with the Arts Centre, with Surestart having the ground floor and the Arts Centre having the first floor, but with shared facilities."

Surestart Weymouth and Portland was established in spring last year and has more than 300 families registered. It is part of a 10-year national programme with 450 groups nationwide where parents of children under four can call on the advice and support of professionals such as health visitors, midwives, child carers, speech and occupational therapists, to help with any aspect of parenting.

Although it is aimed at helping parents from disadvantaged backgrounds, Mrs Pitman is keen to stress that the programme is open to all.

"We work with families from all backgrounds. The strength of a programme like this is that participants come from everywhere. The only criteria is that that they live in the right postcode and have a child under four years old," she said.