New Nunhead Community Centre - Decision Day!

Today's the big day for the Nunhead Community Centre campaign. After years of campaigning, firstly to get our old centre reopened and latterly for a new Centre, it looks like we will get official sign off from the council tonight.

Hidden deep within the Executive Committee report on its refreshed capital spending program is the proposal to spend £600k on building a new Nunhead Community Centre next to the Old Nun's Head Pub (on the soon to be vacated Early Years Centre site).

The project is self funding as the Council plan to sell off the old site to developer and the centre will only take up a portion of the Early Years site, the rest of which they will also sell off.

It's a compromise of course - in an ideal world with unlimited public funding we'd have liked to refurbish the old centre and have another public facility (perhaps a health centre?) on the site of the Early Year Centre, but in the real world money is tight and this is as much as the council was prepared to give.

So fingers crossed that everything runs to plan tonight then we can start on our next steps to make some bids for match funding (so we could have a bigger, better and greener centre) and start working with the council on designing our new centre!

Nunhead Arts Week 2009

This Friday sees the launch of the 2009 Nunhead Arts Week. Lot's of fantastic events are planned including the Nunhead Open art exhibition in the (temporarily reopened) Nunhead Community Centre, Comedy and Quiz Nights, jazz concerts and more.

After the first view of the Open on Friday night, the week really gets motoring on Saturday with Green Day on Nunhead Green. They'll be all kinds of fun for families (read more here) - and I'm delighted to have the honour of opening of the new children's play area at around noon.

Later in the week I'll be taking questions on local issues at Question Time at the Celebration Day for older people. I've no doubt the Community Centre will be a major subject of concern.

Click here for the full programme for the week. I look forward to seeing you there!

Save the Nunhead Community Centre

One of the stories you may have missed during my blogging break was the closure of the Nunhead Community Centre. It was locked up after one of the ladies who helps run the centre contracted Legionnaires disease. Traces of the legionella bacteria were found at the centre, although the council claims it didn't match the strain the lady had.

Anyway, even though the centre's water system has been cleaned through the centre has not been opened up again. The Housing Department has declared the centre "surplus to requirements" and has handed the centre over to the Property Team which takes care of renting out commercial properties and disposing of properties.

The good news is that we have been assured that the council isn't currently planning to sell the centre, the bad news is they aren't planning on reopening it any time soon. I'm working closely with representatives of local community groups (Nunhead Community Forum, Nunhead Residents Association, the Sunshine Club, Friends of Nunhead Cemetery and more) to try and get the centre reopened as soon as possible. We've been promised some help from the council's neighbourhood renewal department but it's going to be a tough job putting together a financially viable business plan and finding funding for the refurbishment works the council says need doing.

If anyone can help with the campaign to get the centre reopened under local management do please get in touch.