Community centres in Peterborough could be sold off to save council cash, councillor reveals

Councillors have voted to defer discussing a secret list of buildings Peterborough City Council (PCC) is considering selling off, claiming that it should be made public first.

The council’s scrutiny committee was due to discuss the list in a private session at a meeting this week but voted to wait until at least part of it is put in a public report.

The list contains numerous community centres that are regularly used, Cllr Nick Sandford (Liberal Democrats, Paston and Walton) said at the meeting – although it’s not yet clear which are included.

With a projected £5m budget gap next year – rising to £10m the year after – PCC has been encouraged to identify assets it could sell to try to improve its financial situation by the independent panel which currently oversees its governance and finances.

It has also said that it can’t keep up with operating costs and maintenance on all of its buildings, which include libraries, leisure facilities, green spaces, children’s centres and service buildings.

But the council should be upfront with the public about which of these could be discarded, some councillors on the committee argued.

“If the council is considering the closure of community centres that are used by a significant section of the population, that information should be made available to the public at an early stage to give them an opportunity to comment on it,” Cllr Sandford told the scrutiny committee. “If the council fails to do that, the council is not being respectful to the public.”

He also said that it was “extraordinary” that the meeting’s agenda didn’t have an option to vote on whether or not to keep the report exempt for its duration, saying that this has “never happened before in the 27 years” he’s been a councillor. Officers said that this was simply an oversight.

Cllr Sandford, who is not a member of the scrutiny committee, attended in his capacity as Peterborough mayor to call on it to make the report public; as did Cllr Christian Hogg (Liberal Democrats, Fletton and Stanground) in his capacity as a group leader.

Their views were supported by the majority of the committee including its chair, Cllr Amjad Iqbal (Central, Labour) and Cllr Mohammed Farooq (Peterborough First, Hargate and Hempsted), who made the proposal to defer discussing the report until it’s out in the open.

“The public should be involved [in this] from the very offset,” he said.

'Inappropriate' to tell public before operators and stakeholders

But other councillors, as well as council officers, said it would be “inappropriate” to make the report public at such an early stage as no decisions have been made yet and not even all of the operators involved in the buildings on the list have been informed of the proposals.

Cllr Andy Coles (Conservatives, Fletton and Woodston) – also not a committee member but present in his role as cabinet member for finance – said that councillors “may be creating an issue at the moment which is pre-emptive” as the exempt report is simply intended to “provide information to members about where the direction is going”.

It offers “very early sight” of the process, he continued, and shouldn’t be considered a definite list of buildings to be sold.

Simon Lewis, PCC’s service director for asset management, similarly said that, “in our view, it’s not appropriate to share the information in the public domain” because “you wouldn’t want to hear about things in this way” as an operator or stakeholder, particularly when no decisions have been made.

Cllr Nick Thulbourn (Labour, Fletton and Woodston) even went as far as to say that councillors being given early sight of the report was a “breath of fresh air” and that it’s only right stakeholders are consulted before the list is made public.

But, “if we leave it too late – if we wait until we’ve got a more certain position – are we consulting or are we announcing what’s going to happen,” Cllr Hogg countered, adding that the council would be “leaving little room for stakeholders to be able to effect change.”

Those who were able to vote on deferring the discussion (official members of the committee or their substitutes) voted in favour of doing so with Cllrs Iqbal, Farooq, John Fox (Peterborough First, Werrington), Kirsty Knight (Greens, Orton Waterville), Chris Wiggin (Liberal Democrats, Hampton Vale) and Shabina Qayyum (Labour, East) supporting deferment.

Cllrs Thulbourn, Lindsay Sharp (Conservatives, Hampton Vale), Muhammad Asif (Conservatives, Park), Michael Perkins (Conservatives, Orton Longueville) and Scott Warren (Conservatives, Bretton) voted against.

The deferment of discussing the report could mean an extraordinary meeting is held for this to happen after parts of it, which do not contain sensitive financial information, are made public.

It remains as of yet unclear when this will happen.