Sunday 14 October 2018

The fate of Beeston Town Hall is very much a local issue, but the process of its going should concern every every Broxtowe Borough resident

I can't pretend that I regard Beeston Town Hall as anything other than an uninspiring example of toy town architecture. Pretty at best. Having said that I understand why many Beestonians feel a fierce attachment to the building and, how, despite 45 years of being part of Broxtowe Borough Council they have never quite accepted the fact.



Countless town halls around the country have been sold off over the past fifty years because local authorities have merged or have been replaced by modern civic 'sheds'. The creation of the metropolitan boroughs in 1974 resulted in mergers between not just two councils, but several. Just to name three: Sandwell and Stoke-on-Trent in the West Midlands are both comprised of 6 former councils and Broxtowe 3: Basford Rural District (part); Eastwood and Beeston & Stapleford (the result of an earlier merger in 1935). 

In the latter's case the decision was made in 1973 (I am assuming it was then because there were shadow local authorities in the run-up to April 1974) to keep Beeston Town Hall council chamber rather than move the Council's meeting place to Ilkeston — which is what I would have argued for had I been a borough councillor on the grounds that it is as near to a geographical centre that Broxtowe has despite being in Derbyshire.

Erewash and Broxtowe councils sharing a council chamber would have made sense then and it still does, so long as Broxtowe Borough Council exists, and if the Conservatives have their way Broxtowe will be subsumed into Notts County Council at the first opportunity!

Ilkeston is geographically easier to reach from ALL parts of Broxtowe borough. It's a bit like County Hall being in West Bridgford. Logic says it should be moved to Ollerton in the middle of the county or, once I would have argued Kelham Hall but, oh, wait a minute, Newark & Sherwood District Council sold it to a private company in 2014.

The fate of Beeston Town Hall is very much a local issue and I am assuming the community group bidding to run it have done their sums with regards to rent, servicing and maintenance. As a charity they can plug into the Lottery for capital and project grants, but there is already fierce competition between local groups for what Lottery money there is. If the council lease or rent the Town Hall to the community group they will still have landlord responsibilities, which I'm sure is the last thing they want.

At this late stage I believe the 'community' argument is countered by mismanagement on the part of Broxtowe Borough Council; that the cost of moving a computer hub and decommissioning the Town Hall will take much of the £450,000 the church group is, as I understand it, paying for the building. The community group's offer it can be argued provides income, but the rent will not be a peppercorn one.

The Council could sell the Town Hall to the community group for a nominal £10 as happened when Nottingham City Council sold Lenton Leisure Centre to Lenton Community Association and the whole site morphed into The Lenton Centre. Back then the City Council were trying to sell the site for £160,000 with LCA occupying a third of the building and a 10 year lease because they had refurbished and extended their part of the building with Lottery funding and other charitable grants. 

I was was actively involved in LCA and renting was our first approach until at a meeting attended by the Development Trust they suggested we buy the site instead and that our business plan needed third party input despite LCA having the skills in-house to produce such a business plan. Susan and I raised £15,000 from Social Enterprise East Midlands* (SEEM) and Tesco gave us the services of a senior financial executive to oversee the creation of the business plan. In the event I believe this outside third party support was key to LCA's success. We carried out a door-to-door consultation with our questionnaire across the whole of (New) Lenton and  had a 41% response — it also helped to identify new volunteers with skills which help  the campaign immensely and one of the those volunteers, Carl Towner, an active member of St. Nicholas Church in Nottingham city centre, went on to become The Lenton Centre's first Chief Executive. 12 years on TLC is still going strong and now runs the 'wet' side of the Portland Leisure Centre in The Meadows.

NOTE: * SEEM has obviously changed, but it still exist.

It was a long time ago, but we've kept a few papers and among  them was a copy of the questionnaire we designed and delivered to every house in New Lenton as early as 2004 when Lenton Leisure Centre finally closed (two previous attempts, in 1994 and 2000, were fought off by the local community). We printed it on cream card, because people are more likely to open cream envelopes and to read leaflets printed on cream, thicker, paper (I have no idea if this is still true in 2018).

Click on the images to enlarge.


I had also forgotten that the reason for the 41% response rate was the free draw offering 4 x £50 cash prizes to people completing the form with Lenton addresses.



Getting grants quickly was easier then and, if I remember correctly, the questionnaire was funded by  Nottinghamshire Community Foundation who gave LCA a number of small grants during the course of our campaign.

It is a story I know well because Susan and me were part of it. The logo Susan created was being used until quite recently and it is my history of the building and how it all happened that is on The Lenton Centre website. Back in 2016 we gave the archives of Lenton Community Association to Nottinghamshire Archives and they end on the day The Lenton Centre took over the building from Lenton Community Association and Susan was one of the first directors.

It was hard work, I couldn't do it now, but whole process from beginning to end was in the public domain, all the meetings were open to the community. We were pushing newsletters through every door in Lenton almost monthly for 2 years.

Our Labour ward councillors, Zahoor Mir and Dave Trimble were fantastic throughout, as was our then Labour MP Alan Simpson and the value of their support cannot be underestimated.

You do not win community campaigns by being polite or non-political. Our campaign was open and that was at the heart of our success. No one was excluded.

The only thing that can save Beeston Town Hall from falling into the hands of a church group is that the bidding process has been flawed from the beginning and Matt Turpin and his colleagues are to be praised for all their hard work in revealing this fact more than once in such minute detail. The latest post to his Beestonia blog should be enough to ensure the church bid is never considered by Broxtowe Borough Councillors.

No councillor worth the title will agree to selling it to a non-community group. It should be as simple as that!

Somehow every voter in Broxtowe needs to be alerted to the flawed process at the heart of this sell-off and this is the argument which needs to be concentrated on!

Mention of Beeston will alienate many who live in other parts of the borough. Beeston appears to thrive whilst other parts suffer, so the argument to save the Town Hall has to focus on the process — not the outcome.

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