The Nottingham Post

Protect Nottingham Community Centres

2025

The Nottingham Post launched its hard-hitting campaign – Protect Nottingham Community Centres – in January 2025, calling on the city council to rethink plans that threatened the future of dozens of much-loved local institutions.

The campaign was sparked by proposals for the council to end the support it gives to Nottingham’s community centres, placing many at risk of closure. These centres, found across areas such as Sherwood, Bulwell and Lenton, provide vital spaces for everything from children’s groups and food banks to classes, social clubs and faith gatherings.

With little coverage of the issue elsewhere, Nottinghamshire Live and the Post took the lead in highlighting the potential consequences of the closures. Agenda editor Oliver Pridmore drew on a wide network of contacts to attract major support from day one, including a Nottingham Labour councillor who broke ranks with her party to back the campaign.

The impact was immediate. In its launch month alone, stories about the campaign attracted 20,000 page views. More importantly, it quickly secured two major victories: forcing the council into a U-turn on plans to impose market-level rents on centres, and persuading them to host a public meeting with community centre managers so concerns could be aired.

The campaign also prompted an open letter to the city council signed by over 100 people, among them Councillor Kirsty L Jones of Mapperley. The campaign called for:

• The city council to host a meeting with as many representatives from the centres as possible. We believe the council should use the meeting we are calling for to share a fully-fledged scheme in terms of how rent payments in future could work
• Future schemes around rent payments to come with as much leniency as possible in terms of deferrals, discounts and support for when a centre cannot pay its monthly rent bill
• The city council to adjust its current timeline of completely ending subsidies by April 2025. There should be a new timeline, and this timeline should be the same for all centres, giving some sorely-needed certainty to the sites and their users

Already, the campaign has succeeded in shaping council policy. The authority has said rents will now be set only to cover running costs rather than at full market value – a critical change that will help centres to stay afloat. In direct response to Nottinghamshire Live’s calls, the council agreed to host a city-wide meeting with centre representatives.

The Nottinghamshire Post’s campaign continues to fight to make sure these vital community centres are protected for the future.