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Work finding jobs under threat
• ONE can only be grateful for Councillor Chris Philp’s suggestions (Your hired! Contractors are urged to take on apprentices, November 27) about measures to reduce youth unemployment in Gospel Oak.
However, I am not sure whether he is aware that there was a job fair last month in Queen’s Crescent Community Centre attended by over 150 people. In addition the community centre is a registered Assessment and Qualifications Alliance provider of a range of qualifications which would help young people get jobs.
We also help with finding jobs and writing CVs.
Unfortunately, the continued lack of funding from Camden Council for work with young people means that we cannot have as an extensive a programme of work as we would like. Community centres like ours are central to delivering programmes for helping young people develop skills. We hope Cllr Philp will support us in our efforts
Later this month Camden Council is holding a consultation with a view to community centres taking on full commercial leases for their buildings at full market rents. The papers sent to community centres have made it clear that they will have their core grants from the council reduced to pay for these full commercial rents. For Queen’s Crescent Community Association this will mean us paying (or having our grant reduced) by over £40,000 per year.
We also know from a council survey of our buildings in 2005 that a lot of money needs spending to bring them up to standard. The report gives a figure of £400,000 over 10 years.
If this proposal is implemented our community centre will go out of business very quickly and there will no longer be any services provided for young people or for any of the wide range of people we currently provide for in the area.
At QCCA we currently raise from outside charitable sources over £230,000 which is three times the core grant we get from Camden Council. This additional funding will also disappear along with the large numbers of volunteers we have recruited
Perhaps Cllr Philp and his Conservative colleagues can think again about their proposals for community centres because if we are forced out of business by having to pay a commercial rent there will be no locally-based job fairs, no skills training for young people, no help with getting jobs and no leveraging in of funding from charities.
By all means let Cllr Philp get people together in the same room to talk to each other. However, what is needed is support for organisations already working in this field, and actions not words.
Mick Farrant
Chair, QCCA Ltd, NW5 |
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