Future of much-used Hindu centre of worship in Peterborough to be decided in days
The future of a Peterborough community hub that has served as a Hindu centre of worship for 40 years looks set to be decided in just days.
The date has just been announced for a special meeting to review a decision by Peterborough City Council’s ruling cabinet to sell the New England Complex in Lincoln Road, Millfield.
Members of the council’s Sustainable Future City Council Scrutiny Committee will meet on January 12 at 10am to take a new look at the cabinet’s decision last month to sell the centre to an external buyer even though there was a £1.2 million offer from the current users, Bharat Hindu Samaj.
The meeting has been set up after three councillors, Councillor Roger Antunes, Cllr Ann Shaheed and Cllr Asif Shaheed, used council procedures to ‘call-in’ the cabinet’s decision to sell.
The building on Rock Road has been home to the Bharat Hindu Samaj for 40 years and serves an estimated 13,500 Hindus from across Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and Lincolnshire.
The decision to sell has prompted concerns that the buyers the council is looking at will not maintain the current uses of the centre.”
As well as being an important place of worship, the temple hosts a wide range of community events and makes large charitable donations.
But Mohammed Jamil, the Labour's finance cabinet member for Peterborough City Council, has said that Bharat Hindu Samaj had not submitted the highest bid in a tender process to buy the premises.
The centre is being sold by the local authority as part of an ongoing process to reduce its debts and balance its books through a disposal of some of its assets.