Camden New Journal - Letters: Community centres

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Camden New Journal - LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Published: 11 October 2007

Community centres are about delivering services

• WE would like to clarify some of the points made about council plans for community centre buildings (‘We’ll quit over red tape row’, October 4) as we fear there has been a deal of economy of truth from the council.
Andrew Marshall states “there are no plans to change our rent policies (to community centres)”.
Yet later in the article it states that a council grant for the rent will be available for “two years”. There is already one community centre where the council rent grant is below the actual commercial rent charged and the centre has to pay the difference.
Community centres have already been told that they cannot expect to continue to get the 20 per cent discretionary business rate relief. For Queen’s Crescent Community Association this will mean having to find over £7,000 next year. Similarly, after two years we will have to find money for our buildings insurance and possibly an increasing proportion of our rent, currently set at £40,100.
While we welcome the stability that we now have from three years’ funding, this is frozen and even using a 2.5 per cent inflation figure this means that we need to find an additional £1,800 next year.
Directors and trustees of community centres are all volunteers and receive no “allowances” for their work. Company law is such that under certain circumstances they can be personally financially liable if they fail to “make judgments and estimates that are reasonable and prudent”. Signing a lease on a building when the council refuses to give us a copy of the condition survey would seem to be the height of “imprudence”.
Having now, at last, seen the schedule of works for one of our buildings it fails even to mention the major problems the building has.
We have been trying to change the conditions of the lease for some time but it would appear that the council is adamant in its intention to charge a commercial rent and transfer both the costs of repairs and the financial risk of managing a building to community centres. Indeed we were earlier this year threatened by a council officer that if we did not sign the lease we would not get our grant.
Community centres are about delivering services to local people not managing buildings. To the extent that we have to use our resources to pay the council business rates, repairs to a building which is in a very poor state of repair and possibly after two years rent and buildings insurance, the less we can spend on services.
It is not “red tape” which concerns us as directors of a community association but the medium-term financial viability of our centre. We are in the process of trying to expand our services particularly to young people following the two thirds reduction by the council to these services in our area.
If we have to pay rent, business rates and other charges associated with having a commercial lease for our buildings then we fear we will follow the Jubilee Trust and the law centre into closure in the medium term.
MICK FARRANT chair
Sally Gimson vice-chair
QCCA Ltd

Send your letters to: The Letters Editor, Camden New Journal, 40 Camden Road, London, NW1 9DR or email to letters@camdennewjournal.co.uk. The deadline for letters is midday Tuesday. The editor regrets that anonymous letters cannot be published, although names and addresses can be withheld. Please include a full name, postal address and telephone number. Letters may be edited for reasons of space.

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