January 10, 2025

Your Community Centre Needs YOU

 

Be part of securing the future of Kings Heath Community Centre at the upcoming BKH Ward Forum: 
Saturday 18th January;
11.00am – 13.00pm;
Kings Heath Community Centre. 

As you may be aware, Birmingham City Council has recently invited proposals from any organisations interested in assuming the ownership of a number of local centres via a process that is commonly referred to as a ‘Community Asset Transfer’. Kings Heath Community Centre was included in this call. Prior to this, your Councillors, Enjoy Kings Heath (Kings Heath BID), the Ward Forum and local partners had been looking to develop a plan for the centre that would encourage its users, local residents and stakeholders to take it over, creating a space run both by and for the community.

The prospect of the Community Centre being transferred to an external organisation that did not reflect the interests of these groups concentrated minds and led to a number of us coming together with Enjoy Kings Heath to submit an expression of interest. Inevitably, we have had to respond to deadlines in order to put together an initial proposal and, whilst we have not had the chance to speak to as many of you as we would have liked, we can assure you that our submission was based on past engagement with centre users, young people and residents throughout the Ward planning process. We sincerely hope that you can join us on the 18th of January, at the upcoming BKH Ward Forum, to set out exactly what you would like to see from the Community Centre. We are eager to hear about your plans and to understand would your role could be in establishing the centre as the community hub we envision it as.

Naturally, as a coalition of local partners, we are having to look at how we can fund and organise ourselves to develop a sustainable proposition. We are currently looking at a community share offer – much like the one that helped to secure the future of York Supplies – and will be testing the interest in this over the coming weeks. We are also seeking several founding members who would be keen to work with us to take the project forward. We strongly believe that existing users have a pivotal role to play in this process and would like to invite them to participate in shaping the future of the centre. The first step will simply be to turn up to the drop-in on the 18th of January and talk through your interests. For further information and to confirm your attendance, please click here.

Lisa Trickett and Matthew Powell
(On behalf of KHCC Coalition)

 

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