Charity’s bid to take over community centre hit by ‘frustrating’ delays

Proposals to hand over a Newport community centre to a local group have suffered “frustrating” and “soul destroying” delays.

City council officials said they would “learn from” the matter and had sought specialist training to help it get to grips with the relatively new process.

Ward councillor Matthew Pimm told a scrutiny committee plans for the future of Eveswell Community Centre faced “lots of hold-ups”.

The site is subject of an ongoing Community Asset Transfer (CAT) – a legal process through which local authorities can hand over surplus or unwanted buildings and other assets to interested community groups or organisations.

In this case, a proposed deal would pass Eveswell Community Centre to a charity, Toc H, which already runs activities and workshops there.

A 25-year lease has previously been suggested for the CAT arrangements.

Speaking at a Newport City Council scrutiny meeting, on Monday July 21, Cllr Pimm said the process had involved “delays” and “quite a bit of confusion” for those involved.

He urged officers to “speed it up” and suggested the CAT process “needs to be as straightforward as possible”.

Delays had “made life quite difficult in terms of planning ahead [for] when we take over the asset”.

Tracy McKim – the council’s head of people, policy and transformation – said the local authority had “accepted all along” the Eveswell Community Centre CAT is “something we need to learn from”.

The council has worked with Gwent third-sector umbrella organisation GAVO and an “external provider” to improve its use of CATs, the committee heard.

Ms McKim added she believed the transfer of Eveswell Community Centre would be “a real positive outcome when we get it over the line”.

Rhian Howells, the cabinet member for assets and infrastructure, said the early work on CATs would help the council with “accruing knowledge”, and “going forward we will be able to do it better”.

Speaking later in the meeting, Cllr Pimm said the community group involved in the Eveswell CAT process had “nearly lost out on our funding… because of the delays”.

“A lot needs to be learned”, he said, adding it was “soul destroying… waiting for something to happen”.