New Community Centre for Nunhead

This Saturday I chaired a debate at the Nunhead Community Forum AGM to decide a way forward for the Nunhead Community Centre Campaign. Gavin, Vikki and Renata have already posted on it on the Peckham Rye Labour Blog.

As previously reported the existing Centre closed in 2007 and since then it has been a continuous battle with the council to get our centre back with the goal posts constantly being moved.

Earlier this year we were offered some shop fronts in the new block next to the Nun's Head, but at a public meeting people agreed that this was not adequate. Some local residents protested by occupying the centre and reopening it to the community, till the council evicted them.

Since then the council has come back to the table and significant progress has been made with them now offering to build a new centre (most likely on the other side of the Nun's Head on part of the soon to be vacated Early Years Centre site). First they offered around 180m2, but we've now got them up to about 220m2. It's still far smaller than the old centre (which was around twice the size), but the campaign team felt it should be presented to the community to seek views about whether to focus on this option or to continue the fight for the old centre to reopen.

So on Saturday Cllr Tim McNally, the LibDem cllr in charge of council finances and properties, came to the Community Forum AGM to present the proposals and to answer questions. He made it clear that the council is facing tough times with its budgets, that they do not believe the old centre is viable either in terms of the money needed to get it open again or the ongoing maintenance and running costs.

After over an hour of debate we took a vote and by a large majority the 50+ residents at the meeting agreed that we should focus on getting a new centre. It was clear that there is considerable reluctance about this and it was agreed that we should keep on pressing the council to make the new centre as large as possible and also look to see if we can raise some match funding to help with that.