Holgate community centre business plan queried

The Council opened a new community centre (“Space 217”) serving the Lindsey Avenue area last year.

The initiative seemed to signal a welcome reversal of the current Council Leaderships policy of cutting all funding support from local community facilities.

However more information has become available which suggests that there is no ongoing business plan to support the facility.

At present all costs are being born by Council tenants (rent payments) through the housing account.

Ironically the two community centres most likely to close, as a result of Labour’s cut’s programme (Foxwood and Chapelfields), were also built on Housing Department owned land.

The Council says that it has had to spend around £31,000 bringing the former shop up to a standard that would allow it to be used as a community “hub”. This cost included the provision of disabled access and the removal of asbestos

The Council says that ongoing costs will also be paid for from within existing ring fenced “housing maintenance budgets”.

Strangely the Council is not offering financial support to other community centres from its housing maintenance budgets despite them being used by estate management officers, and other Council staff, as local meeting points.

NB. Lindsey Avenue is currently represented by Council Leader James Alexander. He will be under a lot of pressure if he is to retain his seat in next years local elections. The decision to open the new centre was taken behind closed doors.

Space 217 costs

Council set to ditch community centres.

The York Council will spend £175,000 over the next year bringing York’s four community centres into “a good state of repair”.

This will be followed by a “community asset transfer”.

What this means is that the volunteer committees, who run the centres, will be expected to raise funding not only for day to day activities but also for the repair and maintenance of all aspects of the buildings.

Typical community centres, like the ones at Foxwood and Chapelfields, have running costs of between £25,000 – £50,000 a year.

In the past the bill for part of these costs have been picked up by the Council.

This year it has reduced its grants to the centres by £70,000.

2014/15 will be the final year that the centres will get the remaining £70,000 grant.

After that the Centres will be on their own.

It means that, unless volunteers can be found to take on the additional financial burden, the Centres will close (or, more likely, simply be sold to the highest bidder)
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Meanwhile we are told that the Council intends to privatise its building cleaning contracts. How this will affect the community centres, and for how long, remains to be seen.

Labour plan to abandon community centres in York

The latest in a long list of poor decisions by the Labour Council could see four community centres in York close.

The provisional budget for next year sees all the community centres (Chapelfields , Foxwood , Tang Hall , and Bell Farm) lose their Council grants.

Typically a community centre costs around £50,000 a year to run with most income generated from hiring rooms.

The Council are to cut their financial support entirely leaving some of the centres with a 5 figure budget deficit.

Already the community centre caretakers have been issued with redundancy notices (although they are likely to be redeployed within the Council).

The Council says that it wishes to see the buildings transferred into the ownership of a voluntary committee with a community asset transfer by April 2015

This seems to be what has prompted the Tang Hall centre to announce that it is changing the legal status of its voluntary committee.

The voluntary committees undertake a thankless task and deserve Council support.

The Foxwood and Chapelfields centres depend entirely on the resources of local residents to continue, while Tang Hall was only kept going when Labour Councillors were parachuted into key roles.

Burton Stone community centre future unclear

Burton Stone is a larger building and its future is much more unclear.

Without caretakers, the buildings will be closed to general callers reducing their use as a focal point for neighbourhood communications. One Community Centre (Tang Hall) has already leased office space to an outside organisation.

All the Community Centres are located in what the Council regards as “deprived areas” .

The Council hopes to save £180,000 through the cuts. Most of this will come from the Burton Stone centre.

NB. The Council is planning to spend £1.6 million hosting just one day of the Tour De France cycle race.

Click here to download a full list of proposed cuts (see ref Can 12)