It’s that time of year again, when Labour-run councils up and down the country set out their plans of how to execute yet another round of cuts to local services. Nottingham City Council is no exception. This year’s proposed cuts of £15.6 million follow a total of £271 million already slashed in the last decade.
This year’s budget document is a classic example of double-speak by council bureaucrats as they lay out in neat tables which sections of the working class are to be shafted this time around. In one example we are told that “improving customer access to the council” will happen through “rationalisation of contact centres”.
Translation: they are cutting jobs and you’ll likely be on the phone to a robot for 20mins before you can talk to a real person. Note also how citizens have become customers.
Meanwhile, we are informed that the Children’s Centre “offer will become more targeted and available from fewer locations working with partners to redesign the universal offer”.
Translation: some children’s centres will be shut, and they don’t want to tell us which ones. Expect council-run services for parents of young children to be slashed once again.
But local people are fighting back. FRFI supporters in Nottingham have joined the community campaign to Save John Carroll leisure centre and swimming pool. The John Carroll centre is a vital community resource, based in Radford, an inner-city ward with high levels of poverty. It is one of the last public centres left in the area and acts as lifeline for many, hosting community groups for vulnerable and elderly people and a host of sporting activities and programs for the people of Radford.
Local resident Sian explains it well: “Too often our inner-city communities are the first to lose vital spaces – Noel Street is gone, Tennyson Hall Youth Club is gone, Tennyson Street Playcentre is gone – we have so little left. We cannot lose John Carroll too.”
Given that Nottingham Labour Party’s manifesto for the last council elections committed to protect leisure centres from cuts we might have expected at least a few crocodile tears. Instead, Leisure portfolio holder Councillor David Trimble tried to justify the closure of the much-loved John Carroll centre on the basis that it generates less income than other leisure centres and therefore requires a higher council subsidy. This is a dangerous argument, since it pits public services against each other in competition, putting centres in poorer areas at a clear disadvantage because their residents cannot afford to pay for so many costly activities, and leads to a cycle where poorer areas are given less investment rather than more.
The campaign to save the John Carroll centre is more than a fight for a single leisure centre, it is a fight for public health being a right for all, not a luxury for those with the ability to travel further or pay more. Now is the time to draw a line in the sand and say No More Cuts. If you agree then join us in the campaign to Save John Carroll! Weekly zoom meetings happen on Thursday evenings at 7pm www.tinyurl.com/SaveJC
More information can be found at www.savejohncarroll.co.uk
