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From The Socialist newspaper, 18 January 2017
Residents protest at plans to close nine community centres
Carnegie Library in Lambeth, children's music session, April 2016, photo James Ivens (Click to enlarge)
Hyde Housing Group announced plans to close nine community centres in the run up to the Christmas break. Two of the centres earmarked for closure by Hyde are in Lambeth and support 870,000 visits a year.
The buildings, their maintenance and the promise to keep them for the community were part of the stock transfer deal from Lambeth Council to Hyde around 20 years ago. Hyde now looks to be breaking its promises to residents by closing them down in its endless search for ever higher profits.
Hyde, like other housing associations, are now big business property developers more than providers of social housing. It has an operating profit of 27% and £95 million in the bank, but doesn't want to pay the £170,000 (or 20p a visit) annual operating costs for the two Lambeth community centres.
Instead, Hyde plans to bulldoze the Kennington Park Community Centre for luxury flats and lease the Stockwell Community Resource to a new provider - with absolutely no guarantees that its present service will be accommodated in the new deal.
Lambeth Council, with some of the highest areas of deprivation in the country, has delivered Tory cuts totalling a 56% reduction in spending since 2010. Predictably this has meant the closure of local services, including half of the libraries in the area. Now Hyde is following the council's lead.
Residents lobbied the head office of Hyde on 6 January and are demonstrating again on 21 January. Gather at Stockwell memorial gardens at 2pm and say no to Hyde. Show your support for our community centres before we say goodbye to what is left of local facilities.
Keep our centres open!
Lisa Bainbridge, Lambeth Socialist Party
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In The Socialist 18 January 2017:
What we think
Labour's civil war continues - build a mass workers' party
Tories torn in two on single market
Resist Trump
We can stop Trump's sexist agenda in its tracks
International socialist news and analysis
Mexico: Mass movement against "gasolinazo"
USA: Seattle activists win housebuilding programme
1917revolution.org website to launch
Socialist Party news and analysis
'Black alert' NHS: Demonstrate 4 March
Eight billionaires own as much as half humanity!
Pollution kills 600: fight for clean air!
Northern Ireland calls snap election: back Labour Alternative
Millwall FC move threat: Defend the Den - 'wall not Renewal
Workplace news and analysis
Billions in profit for Tesco, cuts and job losses for workers
Liverpool dockers and drivers protest "appalling lack of facilities"
Manchester: BA cabin crew pay strike
London: Taxi drivers gridlock City of London
Southern Rail strike continues
PCS union national executive elections
Socialist Party reports and campaigns
The Socialist: read it, write it, sell it
Protesters surround Sheffield's cutting council
Fracking protest in Sherwood Forest
Residents protest at plans to close nine community centres
Anger at south east Kent Momentum meeting
Socialist Party national committee agrees document for congress
Socialist readers' comments and reviews
Why I joined the Socialist Party
Theatre review: high art and savage poverty in Bootle
John Berger: remarkable art of a contradictory socialist
Socialist artists invite others to exhibit work
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