Six community centres axed to save £120,000

Published on Wednesday 17 February 2010 09:01

SIX community centres in the Capital are to be closed within months as part of the cash-strapped city council's cost- cutting drive.

The Evening News can today reveal the centres that will close to save the council 120,000.

Sighthill, Longstone and Colinton Mains will all lose their local community centres from April under the council's radical plans.

Gorgie Memorial Hall will also be closed down, while the Platform Adult Learning Centre in Wester Hailes is to close.

And numeracy tuition centre The Number Shop, on the Pleasance, will also be axed.

The moves, which are expected to have an impact on six jobs, have been criticised by community leaders and trade unions.

But city leaders insist that all users of the community centres facing closure will still be able to get the same service nearby.

Details of the closures come a week after the council unveiled plans to make 41m of efficiency savings for 2010/11, including a review of community centre provision.

John Stevenson, president of the Edinburgh branch of the trade union Unison, said: "This is typical of this budget that it went through without a whimper but the real impacts will only start unravelling in future weeks and months.

Under the council's proposals, services at Gorgie Memorial Hall will instead transfer to the new Tynecastle High School, while Sighthill Community Centre services will transfer to a new community "hub" at the former Westburn Primary School.

Much of the grant given to each of the six facilities will partly be used towards providing services elsewhere, with the 120,000 figure representing the overall saving.

Community centres at Bingham and Duncan Place had also been earmarked for closure by council officials to provide an extra 146,500 saving but councillors rejected the proposals.

Five of the community centres that will close are within three council wards in the south-west of the city, Sighthill/Gorgie, Pentland Hills and Colinton/ Fairmilehead.

Of the ten councillors that represent the three wards, there is only one Liberal Democrat and two SNP councillors.

Councillor Andrew Burns, leader of the Labour group on the city council, said: "They are short-term decisions that will come back to cause serious problems in future. It is not that large a financial saving but it will cause a lot of difficulties locally."

Keith Bell, secretary of the Sighthill, Broomhouse and Parkhead Community Council, said that part of the council housing department's masterplan for the regeneration of the North Sighthill area had included a new community centre to replace the existing facility.

He said: "It sounds like the left hand doesn't know what the right is doing. It sounds like a mish-mash, with officials sitting in their offices not knowing what their decisions will mean."

Councillor Jason Rust, who represents the ward that includes Colinton Mains Community Centre, said: "It is a much valued local facility. This has come as a bolt from the blue and will be strongly resisted by local people."