Showing posts with label Save Charteris Sports Centre. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Save Charteris Sports Centre. Show all posts

Tuesday 5 April 2011

Council call police in as they close Charteris

From the Save Charteris Sports Centre Facebook page:
As most of you are aware, Charteris ceased operations on Thursday, March 31st. Council, in a last act of thumbing their nose to all of those who worked hard to keep it open and have supported Charteris over the years with their patronage, shut the centre in the middle of the afternoon rather than their normal 10pm closing time. They brought police officers to shoo everyone away and a work crew to board up the premises. The staff weren’t even alerted in advance. Evidently, they can’t imagine that those of us subject to their budget cuts and trapped by their inability to imagine another course of action could actually leave quietly and respectfully, as we would any other night. Shame on them.
It is likely that the Council feared that the premises may have been occupied by campaigners ahead of closure. Next step libraries?

Sunday 3 April 2011

Charteris Boarded Up but Campaign Goes On

Brent Council lost no time in following through Sue Harper's promise that Charteris Sports Centre would close 'in the near future' after she had rejected the Save Charteris Campaign's proposal to run it as a community venture. Campaigners expected it to close on Friday April 1st but in fact the council boarded it up on Thursday.

Meanwhile the determined supporters of the Centre haven;'t given up and this message was pasted on their Facebook Page:
Brent Council has rejected the Business Plan put forward by the Save the Charteris Campaign Group and therefore the centre will close on Friday 1st April (how appropriate).

Instead of trying to work in partnership and seeing the bigger picture (a Business Plan) of what we are trying to achieve, Brent has focused on every minor detail of our capability to run the centre – details that can only be fully covered in weeks rather than the days we’ve had to content with.

We have a viable business model approved by the London Marathon Trust. We have the full support of the GLA. We now also have written financial commitments from Funding bodies.

We are going to answer the Council on each of their points and prove to them we can run the centre – better than they can.

We will update you shortly with next steps, how we will move into the next stage of the campaign to keep the Charteris open and how you can all get involved.

Wednesday 30 March 2011

Charteris will 'close in the near future' - Sue Harper but may re-open in one ot two months - campaigners

Brent Council has decided not to proceed with the Save Charteris Sports Centre Campaign's proposal to take over and run the Centre as a community project.

In a ten page letter Sue Harper, Director of Environment and Neighbourhood Services, sets out the reasons why the council feels the project is not viable.

A detailed analysis was undertaken by officers responsible for sports and leisure provision, specialists in contract and human resources law, senior financial and human resources advisors and a Health and Safety Inspector.

The council make it clear that any proposal should be at zero cost to them and have no risks attached. They set out risks in terms of the financial viability of the proposal and question the Campaign's assumptions about revenue streams and expenditure, costs of running the building and long term maintenance, and question the free transfer of equipment assets worth £40,000.  They question whether the proposed staffing structure would ensure health and safety and suggest that TUPE would apply if the main functions of the Centre continue. Applying TUPE would involve additional costs.

The council says the proposal does not meet the expectation that Charteris would be a safe facility and cites the proposal's silence on CRB checks and safeguarding of children and vulnerable adults. They suggest that the council may face legal challenge from other potential users if they offered the building at a peppercorn rent to the Charteris Campaign.

After thanking the group for the 'interest they have shown'  Sue Harper concludes: "...however, we cannot ignore the financial and legal risks involved for the council, and so we will be implementing the decision to close Charteris Sports Centre in the near future."

One key summary comment in the Council's Appraisal is perhaps a warning to other campaigns, including those proposing 'volunteer' solutions for libraries faced with closures, as well as raising issues about the viability of the  'Big Society' in general:
"Heavy reliance on volunteers. Will this commitment be sustained? Must recognise high likelihood of turnover as some people use volunteering as a springboard to career and others move away.
Insufficient material on how volunteer base will be recruited, nurtured and managed without the hard core becoming lumbered and themselves drifting away...
Meanwhile campaigners have invited supporters to attend the Centre this evening between 8 and 10pm to mark its last day as a Brent-run facility.  They still hope to re-open the facility  in one or two months saying that they have offers of 'serious money' from two sports charities and support from the Minister of Sport, Mayor of London, local MPs and some local councillors.

Save Charteris on FACEBOOK

Wednesday 9 March 2011

Charteris Meeting on Saturday

A message from the Charteris Sports Centre Campaign:

Public Meeting on Saturday the 12th of March, 4.30 at Charteris.

The future of Charteris is at stake.

Please come and be part of the future:


Please bring your friends, neighbours, local residents, Charteris users.

Sunday 6 March 2011

Cuts - where do we go from here?


There is an organising meeting of Brent Fightback tomorrow Monday March 7th, 7.30pm at the Trades Hall/Apollo Club, Willesden High Road and Brent Friends of the Earth have a meeting on 'The recession and its impact on the environment and the green agenda' at the Rising Sun, Harlesden Road,  7.30pm on Tuesday March 8th. Fightback will be assessing the effectiveness of the lobby of Monday's Council meeting and the current position regarding cuts, planning for the March 26th demonstration, and reviewing future strategy.

The upshot of the Council's decisions is that there were some concessions after community campaigning:  reprieves for the Wembley youth clubs (albeit with two merging), restoration of funding (with 12% cut) for the Law Centre, Citizen's Advice and Private Tenants Rights Groups; reprieve for the Welsh Harp Environmental Education Centre (with 50% private funding from a local builder).

There may be a temptation to attribute these successes to effective campaigning  but libraries, where campaigning was most vociferous and got national coverage, are still likely to close. Campaigners are rightly asking how the council can set a budget which assumes their closure before the consultation ended. Cllr Powney tries to answer that point HERE  There are also murmurs amongst some councillors that the reprieves are more to do with the Labour leader's 'pet projects' than pressure from rank and file Labour councillors.

Apart from the library campaigns feeling let down by the Council there is also unhappiness in the Charteris Sports Centre campaign where the Council led them to think there was a possibility of a 'Big Society' option (the Campaign was notably absent from the lobby on Monday)  but they have now been told them the Centre will close at the end of March. The issue of the Council stemming/diverting opposition by dangling 'Big Society' possibilities and then going ahead with closure is likely to rankle for some time. This goes alongside the short-term impact of the Council's barring of the public from  the budget meeting and the joking and bantering behaviour of some councillors during the meeting.

Only one Labour councillor abstained on the budget.  Other potential rebels, as I predicted, were brought into line by the concessions. We need to re-assess our future relationship with Labour councillors and the potential for joint campaigns after Monday's decisions.  In terms of the Labour Party generally there has been little lead from Ed Miliband, or the London-wide party, on fighting the cuts.

As far as school budgets go, in the two schools where I am a governor we have been looking at the budget for 2011-12. As predicted although the budget figures are stable they disguise the fact that more services will now have to be bought in at higher prices and there will also be inflation in the price of resource and utilities. In my schools, because of relatively high numbers of children on free school meals, there is some cushioning from the pupil premium, but schools with lower numbers of FSM will face budgetary constraints and may have to make staff redundant. These are likely to be classroom assistants, school meals supervisors etc. There will also be pressure to employ contractors for cleaning etc, who pay lower hourly rates than the Brent Council rates - without pension contributions and holiday pay.  At a broader level as central services provided by the Council are reduced, cut or charged at higher prices, there are likely to be more calls for schools to end their links with the local authority and apply for academy status.

So we are likely to see  libraries and the Sports Centre being closed at the end of March, some redundancies/non-renewal of contracts in schools from April, and the national measures (VAT increase, child benefit freeze, public sector wage freeze, cuts in childcare element of the Working Tax Credit) kicking in at the start of the new financial year.  The latter will see an increase in child poverty and problems for families in finding the cash to pay rent/mortgages (council rents are also going up). There will also of course be a rise in local unemployment as public sector job losses mount. The Housing Benefit cap does not now come into force until 2012 but already private landlords are serving eviction notices on tenants they anticipate will not be able to afford the  rent under the cap.


The Friends of the Earth meeting is relevant as it brings a wider perspective which raises the issue of the wider economy. There is now a developing consensus that the post-Big Bang domination of the economy by the financial sector must come to an end but the Coalition, with its anti-state intervention stance, has little to say about the necessary re-structuring. Ed Miliband in his speech to the Resolution (not Revolution!) Foundation on February 28th admitted that the Labour Party was wrong not to focus more on the type of economy they were building, the need to 'break out of the low-pay, low-skill cycle' and the need for high quality jobs. He also supported the introduction of a living wage.  We would go further in wanting to discuss the restructuring of the economy to gear it towards sustainability with the creation of skilled, socially worthwhile employment that both combats climate change and tackles inequality and poverty.

The question now is where does the anti-cuts campaign go from here?  What should be our objective/s? How can we be pro-active, putting forward alternatives, rather than be merely reactive?