“Community centres will close if council reduces funding,” says one of the affected centres

Community centres will be forced to close if a council proposal to slash grant funding by 50% goes ahead, says one of the affected centres.

Under the consultation, 15 grant-funded community centres would see a loss of £303,960 across two years.

https://www.rochdaleonline.co.uk/news-features/2/news-headlines/121560/budget-for-community-centres-could-be-slashed-in-half-if-council-proposal-goes-ahead

Currently the following Community Centres receive annual grants from the council to enable them to deliver community activity: Back O’th Moss and Crimblecroft in Heywood, Burnside and Demesne in Middleton, Pennines’ Meadowfields, plus BACP, Castlemere, Deeplish, KYP, Rochdale Women’s Welfare, Sparth, Spotland and Falinge, Syke, Turf Hill and Wardleworth.

This proposal would considerably reduce funding available to the centres and would result in a requirement for them to become self-funding in the future.

However, Sparth Community Centre fears the proposal will force many centres to close.

Speaking on behalf of all centre management and staff, Craig Halstead, Acting Centre Manager at Sparth Community Centre, said: “We understand and appreciate the Council has to make some difficult decisions, and make efficiency savings somewhere, to stay within its budget.

“However, Community Centres have already suffered significant cuts to their funding in recent years, and we would like to see the proposed commissioning process scrapped as, in our opinion, it won’t work in practice.

“As one of the 15 community centres directly affected, we think the proposal – if it goes ahead – will result in the closure of most if not all of the 15 community centres the council funds, probably in the financial year 2019-20 unless individual centres have significant free reserves, which Sparth doesn’t have, to enable them to stay open longer.

“If the proposal to cut the Council’s budget for Community Centres by 50% in 2019-20 goes ahead, we would like the Council to cut grants to individual Community Centres by 50%, rather than introduce commissioning. Therefore, having received £40,000 this year, Sparth Community Centre would receive £20,000 next year. This represents a massive loss of income, but we would still remain financially viable.

“Sparth Community Centre would, almost certainly, remain open with a Council grant of £20,000 per year, but if this was reduced to £10,000 per year or less, we would be forced to close.”

He continued: “Sparth Community Centre has been hit with a 23% cut to its grant aid in recent years, and this financial year we have had a further £5,700 cut. Now, we are looking at a further 50% cut to the overall community centres budget next year, followed by another 50% cut the following year.

“The proposed community centres budget for 2019-20 is around £203,000, and just £101,000 for the following year. This, on average, equates to £13,500 per community centre in 2019-20, and £6,700 the following year.

“This year, Sparth’s grant aid is £40,000, so even without the uncertainties commissioning will bring, this will result in a massive reduction in our funding from the council.”

The proposal, which could see community centres competing for funding, will be heard before the council in February 2019.

Mr Halstead added: “As early as next year, it is proposed Community Centres will be forced to compete against each other, to bid for funding, with no guarantee individual Centres will receive any funding at all.

“Further, the commissioning process has not yet been agreed, and the proposal won’t go before the Council for final approval until February 2019. This will leave Community Centres very little time to prepare bids, and will result in Centres having no idea how much if any funding they will receive for 2019-20, and future years.

Sparth falls in the Milkstone & Deeplish ward, where there are two other Community Centres, Castlemere & Deeplish, with Sudden already closed due to a loss of funding this financial year.

He went on: “The 15 affected Community Centres are all different, and operate in very different ways. Most are located in areas of high deprivation, with high ethnic minority populations, yet one of our ward councillors recently commented that there should only be one Community Centre in each ward.

“Geographically, Sparth is separated from the Milkstone & Deeplish area by a busy dual carriageway. Will this be taken into account, or will it simply be ignored?

“To operate successfully, at the very least, Community Centres need to employ one worker to manage/co-ordinate the day-to-day running of the Centre but this is not recognised by this proposal.

“If Centres can’t afford to employ even one worker, who is going to be responsible for the day-to-day running of the Centre? Who is going to complete the quarterly monitoring for the Council? Who is going to identify and apply for external funding, and complete all the necessary monitoring for successful bids?

“The proposal states that the reduction in funding ‘would result in a requirement for them to become self-funding in the future’.

“This, in our opinion, is not a realistic aim – it is never going to happen. Community Centres already source external funding whenever possible, but this is necessarily for specific projects: it will, at best, make a small contribution to the cost of employing a Centre Manager and day-to-day running costs (heating, lighting, insurance, repairs/maintenance, etc.).

“We wonder, will the proposed commissioning process recognise the work Community Centres are already doing, or will it be for new projects only?

“And if it is for new projects only, what happens to the user groups Centres already have, will these be ignored? Centres also provide valuable services to local residents, everything from making phone calls and help with understanding/completing forms to driving licence/passport applications to one-to-one counselling and sign-posting.

“Again, will the commissioning process recognise this valuable work, and who will help local people if they no longer have a local Community Centre to turn to for help?”

The community centre’s first quarter monitoring for this financial year shows over 2,400 children, young people and adults attended various user groups or called in for help/advice in April, May and June 2018.

In the same period, volunteers attended 114 sessions, and outside facilities – an equipped play area and a kick pitch – attracted over 1,600 users.

Most Community Centres, like Sparth, also provide Ofsted-registered early years education through playgroups, pre-schools and nurseries.

Mr Halstead added: “In this respect, in our opinion, Community Centres such as Sparth are incredibly cost effective and provide excellent value for money.

“If Community Centres are forced to close, these early years providers will close as well, so what will happen to all the pre-school children who attend each setting? Where will they go? Quite apart from the upheaval caused to so many families, will there actually be enough places to accommodate all these young children elsewhere?

“Earlier this year, the Council insisted Sparth Community Centre (which is a Council-owned building) needed a complete re-wire and refurbishment of the heating system. This was carried out in February, and cost the Council around £72k. We are spending the last three weeks of the summer holidays, as we do every year, deep cleaning the Centre, painting/decorating, stripping/polishing floors and carrying out essential repairs – all of which comes out of our ever-decreasing budget. It will be a tragedy if, after all this work has been carried out, massive cuts to our funding forces us to close.”

Mr Halstead continued: “Nowhere in the consultation document is the impact on jobs mentioned but, if the proposal is approved and Community Centres are forced to close, numerous jobs will be lost. Is this what the Council wants? Most Centres employ at least 2-3 staff, so 30-45 jobs will immediately be at risk if the proposal is approved.

“Further, early years providers based within Community Centres also employ 3+ staff per setting, so another 45+ jobs will go if Community Centres are forced to close. In total, therefore, this proposal could result in the loss of as many as 100 jobs.

He concluded: “In the long run, if approved and implemented, we believe this proposal will end up costing the Council far more money than it saves – with the loss of numerous Community Centres which, once closed, will be gone forever.

“As an alternative to this proposal, the Council could make significant savings by reducing the number of councillors serving each ward from three to two, as has been proposed and discussed in the past, but never implemented. At the moment there are 60 ward councillors, and two councillors per ward would reduce this number to 40 and would result in a sizable saving on the cost of councillors’ expenses.”

The consultation closes Monday 10 September 2018.

Contact

Survey: https://consultations.rochdale.gov.uk/council-wide/nh-2019-20-022/consultation/intro/

Email: consultation@rochdale.gov.uk

Write to: Freepost RTKH-UCCB-JSJU,

(Rochdale Borough Council, PO Box 100, Public Consultation)

Rochdale,

OL16 9NP