Islington Council is set to investigate how its community centres operate across the borough, in a bid to ‘better respond to local need’.
By Joe Steen
Islington Council is set to investigate how its community centres operate across the borough, in a bid to ‘better respond to local need’.
Cllr Sheila Chapman (Labour), executive member for Equalities, Communities and Inclusion, said the review “could not be more timely” since some centres were not in the best shape they could be.
She urged the Homes and Communities scrutiny committee to be “imaginative” in helping conduct the review, in light of the Town Hall’s financial constraints.
“We’re still strapped for cash,” she said.
Chapman said the review would take a council-wide approach as a way of avoiding case-by-case arguments, and to promote a “strategic”, contemporary look at the situation of the borough’s hubs.
“A lot of community centres on our estates were built in a different time for communities.
“You know how community centres are conventionally run, but we need the spaces to be different,” she added.
The council current has three community centres under its direct control: Andover, Jean Stokes and Vibast.
Members were quick to point out facilities like these have become a real bedrock for different communities, especially as the nights draw in and the cold starts to bite.
Dean Donaghey, resident observer, said places like the Andover were “life savers for not just for kids being withheld from gangs, but pensioners too”.
“We’re going to need these centres for the elderly when the bills are starting in and the food is going up again.”
“Whatever we can do to bring them back into the council, or fund them, either way, will be a benefit.
“Not just to the community, but to everyone around the community, including those who don’t actually use the centres.
“Through the point of people using it, they don’t see such distress like in gang culture and old age pensioners dying of a cold.”
Review lead and assistant director of Community Wellbeing and Engagement, Lorna Hughes, said the scrutiny committee could help with communications to residents in and around the “much-loved” Andover centre, to raise awareness of what they can access there.
Cllr Chapman had also asked the commitee to look beyond three directly-managed community centres to consider where other warm hubs were being delivered better.
“I understand the instinct for all of us is to become quite parochial and think about community assets in our wards, and that we must preserve them at all costs as they are today.
“Whereas, by looking at it council-wide like this, [members] will be able to help us map the community centres, Access Islington Hubs, Sure Start centres — to get an overall picture.”
Cllr Ilkay Cinko-Oner, who leads the main opposition of Independent Socialist councillors, said she was surprised to learn that Islington only manages three community services.
She also stressed that provisions for children were a problem for the council.
“Community centres are for children more so than adults, because we have a small amount of oversubscribed youth centres and a large volume of children.
“We should look at the number of children that access community centres, and the waiting lists of these children trying to get into other centres and after schools clubs, because it is insufficient,” she said.
Hughes said that although the review includes all community centres in the borough, it will allow the council to “unpick” the situation and better understand different management models and ” better respond to local need”.
The committee agreed that it would map what is provided and identify local needs across the council-owned and other community centres to gather examples of good practice, including centres run by voluntary organisations.
In June, research from east London charity Foundation for Future London into local authority-run community spaces found that closures are now outpacing new openings in some boroughs.
Freedom of Information requests to council revealed 46 community spaces were permanently closed between 2018-2023—almost 10 per year.
The report noted that Islington, with “its more than 223 community spaces, seem[s] to have a higher focus on nurturing their community offerings”.