Newcastle play services face closure

Newcastle City Council said that open access play services for five- to 12-year-olds have been earmarked for a 100 per cent funding reduction from the next financial year – a cut that will leave thousands of children without play provision.

Ten play facilities will be affected by the reduction, which represents a £1.1m saving for the council, while a further £600,000 will be cut from the youth services budget in the area.

The council is due to publish its draft budget on 20 November. It will then consult on the proposed cuts until February 2013.

But local play workers believe the decision to “delete” the service has already been made. One play worker, who did not wish to be named, told CYP Now that the council had informed play workers that their 90-day redundancy notices would be served during the consultation period.

“The council has already been doing some consultations with various groups of play workers and they get the definite impression that we’re going,” the play worker said.

“We were told in a meeting last week, but there was no warning. We’ve been facing cuts for years, we’ve reduced our budgets, reorganised and some people have lost their jobs, but we’ve kept going and now they’ve just hit us in the face.”

Play workers have been rallying parents to protest against the closures, but they fear their actions will have little impact given that government spending cuts mean the council has to slash its budget by a third over the next three years – amounting to £90m.

“We’re not totally blaming the council – we know this is because of drastic budget reductions and Newcastle has been hit very unfairly,” said the play worker.

“Unfortunately the kids are the ones who are going to suffer because there’s nothing there for them, and once you delete a play service, you can’t put it back in place.”

The council said the decision was regrettable, and hoped local community groups might be able to take over play services.

“The idea is that the community might be able to step in and maintain these services, but we’re not sure what their capacity will be,” said a Newcastle City Council spokesman.

“We would like that to be a plausible option for the community to inherit these services, but as things stand we’re very unsure about whether they can do that.”

The leader of the council, Nick Forbes, said he would raise the issue with the Chancellor and ask government for more financial support before services were lost.

“In the past two years we have suffered huge cuts in revenue grant that people in this city depended upon,” said Forbes.

“Those cuts, and the cuts that we face over the next three years, have put us on the edge of a precipice, where we are having to consider cutting all services other than those we are required to provide by law.”
 
"We value young people in our city – but if we do not have the money, how can we provide these services?”

Play workers are meeting today to discuss the announcements, which if confirmed, will see the services shut down from April 2013.

The facilities affected include after-school and school holiday play provision, but do not involve early years or nursery services.