A weekly table tennis session for people with learning disabilities has restarted at Brighton Youth Centre after a short break.

Grace Eyre, a charity that supports the learning disabled community, created the table tennis session in partnership with Brighton Table Tennis Club.

Robert English, a learning disabled 33-year-old from Rottingdean who has been coming to the session since the beginning described it as one of the highlights of his week.

He said: “I'm also partially sighted in my left eye and couldn't really hit the ball when I started. Now I can hit it 55 times.”

Robert added: “I highly recommend it for people with learning disabilities. They go at a nice, slow pace and nobody will judge you.”

The session is led by Brighton Table Tennis Club coaches, Francesco Fassari and Wen Wei Xu, who lead participants in warming up, learning new skills and putting them into practice.

Mr Fassari, 36, said: “It's amazing – some of the participants have really taken the sport on board and are now coming to other sessions during the week.”

He added: “We are really proud to be offering this session. We need a community where everyone can be part of something and express their skills.”

Grace Eyre started the session with Brighton Table Tennis Club almost a year ago after receiving a £300,000 grant from Sport England, a public body, to engage more learning disabled adults in various sports.

Jon Hart, sports development project manager for Grace Eyre said: “The English Federation of Disability Sport did some research that said 22 per cent of adults with learning disabilities in Sussex participate in 30 minutes of moderate sport per week.

“So in another three years we'd like to hopefully see the increase of participation because of this project.”

The session runs every Friday from 5-6pm at Brighton Youth Centre, Edward Street.