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Slashed funding will cripple communities
• YOUR coverage of the council’s £6.2 million voluntary sector funding was predictable, (Cuts could finish us, June 28).
But please don’t forget the many organisations that are set to benefit from it. We give the voluntary and community sector much more than any other London borough.
However, we have significant budget pressures and we must make sure public money works as hard as possible for local people.
For the first time in many years, we have had an open process that allows new groups to seek funding. So, in addition to increased funding for many groups, including 14 community centres, we have been able to fund 10 organisations for the first time for new community work.
This is what they will be doing: Age Concern will provide physical activity for older people.
South Hampstead and Kilburn Community Partnership will be setting up a youth forum and helping young people into work.
Fitzrovia Youth in Action will be undertaking drug peer education work. Holy Cross Centre Trust will be advising refugees and asylum seekers.
Camden Plus Credit Union is a new organisation providing accessible, affordable credit to local people.
Pan Intercultural Arts will be working with young people at risk through drama, music, visual arts and dance.
Spare Tyre will be providing a performing arts programme for older people.
Mary Ward Centre will receive funding to teach English and citizenship.
Action for the Blind will be helping people with visual impairment to access employment.
Princes Trust will be working with young people to access employment.
Funding decisions are, of course, very difficult but overall we are confident the new process is fairer and has allowed us to spend the money more efficiently and where it is most needed.
Cllr ANDREW MARSHALL
Deputy leader of the council and executive member for equalities and community development
• THE New Journal’s report on Camden’s latest round of voluntary sector cuts paints only half the picture (Cuts could finish us, June 28).
The real impact is in the detail, and all this at a time when Labour has revealed a £10 million underspend in council services and a 30 per cent increase in council reserves – a massive £30 million political ‘war chest’ for the Tories and their Lib Dem allies.
Beyond the closure of 11 community groups, at the executive meeting several other ‘stealth cuts’ were suddenly revealed. They were:
* A 12 per cent cut – without any prior consultation – of the entire voluntary sector budget.
* Cutting the business rate relief by half for large numbers of community groups, increasing ‘core costs’ by thousands of pounds: again, no consultation;
* Slashing a small but vital maternity-leave fund which helped small groups cope with unexpected employment costs.
Last November, local people made the Tory/ Lib Dem council reverse the massive 40 per cent cuts they proposed to legal and community advice services.
Sadly, they have found other, less obvious, ways of cutting the budget.
All the while the reserves seem to grow and grow.
Whose priorities are those?
Cllr THEO BLACKWELL(Lab)
Deputy leader,
Labour group
• THE Jubilee Centre has gone into voluntary liquidation due to grant aid funding cuts from Camden Council.
The centre provides outdoor and indoor activities for young people across the borough.
This is a unique centre in Camden that focuses on physical and
educational activities and the only one of its kind in the borough.
It will be a shame to see the closure of this exceptional facility, which offers young people the opportunity to participate in a wide range of activities including canoeing, rock climbing, and abseiling.
Many of my peers and fellow school pupils regularly used the facilities in this area of Camden where there was no place like the Jubilee Centre.
The facilities provide disadvantaged and deprived young people with a meaningful purpose to engage in physical activities.
Where will our school children and young people go now to access the facilities provided by the Jubilee Centre?
A generation of Camden school children and young people have benefited from the facilities.
What has happened to the Camden
Children and Young People’s Plan
2006-2009, which embraces the four key themes of Every Child Matters: be healthy, stay safe; enjoy and achieve; make a positive contribution; and achieve economic well-being?
The key themes are also included in the Camden Corporate Plan for Children, Schools and Families, which emphasises the importance of physical activities for young people and states: “We want to help children and young people to enjoy good physical and mental health, and to live a healthy lifestyle.”
(Camden Council’s Corporate Plan 2006-2009: 18.)
Camden’s young people have expressed through various consultations a lack of availability of physical and healthy lifestyle activities across the borough.
They quite rightly feel involvement in sport and recreation can help to reduce levels of youth conflict and diversionary activities; at a basic level they will help to keep young people off the streets.
However, the benefits of improved self-esteem, opportunities for the acquisition of basic life skills and the learning of mutual respect and understanding are also significant benefits to the social development of young people.
It is without doubt that such facilities contribute towards reducing youth conflict and anti-social behaviour among young people.
There have been unprecedented cuts to youth projects in Camden at a time when we have seen an increased level of anti-social behaviour, youth disorder and youth conflict.
I believe cutting back on youth facilities will contribute to demonising and criminalising young people, to say the least.
I urge the council to do everything within its means to save this one-of-a-kind centre in Camden, particularly as it would not cost millions like the Kentish Baths.
Cllr ABDUL HAI
Labour lead member for
community safety
• LABOUR is right to challenge and ‘call in’ the programme of vicious funding cuts to the voluntary sector the Lib Dem and Tory executive voted through last week (Cuts could finish us, June 28).
At the last minute, it emerged that these groups would be hit by what the Lib Dems laughingly call their “Better and Cheaper” savings, which means no allowance for inflation and a 2.5 per cent reduction year-on-year for commissioned services.
Voluntary Action Camden (VAC) says that this amounts to a 15 per cent cut in funding over three years. This includes cutting money for advice services like the Kentish Town Law Centre and Citizens’ Advice Bureaux by almost a fifth.
If that isn’t bad enough, the executive threatened to withdraw business rate relief for voluntary organisations and is abolishing the special allocation of money which was used to help these charities pay for maternity leave for their staff.
These cuts hit the black and minority ethnic community hardest, showing that yet again the Lib Dems and Tories are targeting the poor and vulnerable.
Many organisations that have provided vital community services will now struggle to carry on. For instance, the Somali Community Centre and the Asian Women Lone Parents Association – which help some of the most vulnerable people in Camden – won’t be getting a penny from the council to carry on their vital work next year.
As chair of a local youth project, I know that these cuts won’t just hurt the organisations, but the residents and families who rely on them so much.
The voluntary sector in Camden has always provided additional and complementary support to people in need, on top of council services.
That’s why Labour always funded the voluntary sector more generously than any other London borough.
That legacy of a thriving third sector is now being destroyed.
It is bad enough that the Lib Dems and Tories cut council services – now they’re stripping away the safety-net too.
Increasingly it seems that there are two Camdens – the affluent parts of the borough, which the Lib Dems and Tories care about; and the rest, who have to suffer.
MIKE KATZ
Labour candidate
Haverstock ward
• THE 11 organisations attending the meeting of the Camden Council’s executive committee were all victims of the ongoing cuts that this new Camden administration has gleefully taken on board.
Each of the organisations that has to face funding cuts or has had funding removed altogether was invited to send a submission in time for this meeting – which took place on the evening of June 27 – and were each given three minutes to present their case for the continuation of funding.
Many of these organisation may be forced to wind down – in some cases close down – and will no longer be able to serve the community as they have done in the past.
My organisation, the Greater London Pensioners’ Association, has been funded by Camden’s Labour administration for 16 years or more to part-cover the rent we are paying for the organisation’s office at the old Hampstead Town Hall.
For that continued funding we express our thanks to them for their vital assistance to the work that we carry out for the older people throughout London.
Councillor Andrew Marshall claims that we are an all-London
organisation and for that reason his decision-making body felt that the GLPA no longer qualified for council funding.
Camden is part of the Greater London area and as such the thousands of elderly in this borough are continually addressed as to their needs.
In my allotted three minutes I informed him that a considerable amount of the events and activities of the GLPA are held and carried out in the borough of Camden.
The GLPA gives support and guidance to the local Camden Pensioners group which it helped to set up 14 years ago, and the council said how proud they were to have the GLPA based in their borough.
Should my organisation be forced by the loss of Camden’s funding to close down its activities after serving the elders of London for 35 years, it would impact on the organisations and groups across the Greater London area.
Pensioners have the lowest basic pension in Europe, £41 below the official level of poverty. They face continual cuts in community care and daily health needs and veiled threats to the Freedom Pass – they need a supportive and campaigning organisation which should not be denied them!
KEN SAVAGE
Greater London Pensioners’ Association Hampstead
Town Hall Centre
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