Council stumps up £20,000 to save Dovecote family centre after months of IWCA pressure
A vital children’s facility on Greater Leys, under threat of closure, gained funding for another year at the full council
meeting earlier this month.
Oxford City Council will now provide £20,000 to be spent on running costs for the after-school club and summer play scheme, which caters for children aged from 4 to 12.
Up to 65 children a week used the summer play scheme this year, with up to 24 more joining the school clubs. The Leys Kiddie Club, also based at the centre, is even more popular with another 200 to 300 toddlers attending each month.
The IWCA has been campaigning for council funding of the Dovecote since the beginning of the year when the centre lost out in the allocation of grants to voluntary and community groups.
Dovecote organiser Carole Richards, speaking in the Oxford Mail last month, questioned whether it was right for the city council to give £72,100 to Modern Art Oxford and £26,459 to the Pegasus Theatre while her centre could be forced to close through lack of funding.
‘A lot of the kids will just be left to roam the streets. There will be no safe and secure environment for them,’ she explained to the paper.
‘For some of them, Dovecote is a way of getting away from the daily anxieties of home life. They go home and they are left to look after younger siblings—or have to fend for themselves.’
The process of awarding grants is largely controlled by council officers, with little opportunity for elected councillors to intervene.
An IWCA council motion passed in April criticised the council’s priorities and called for future funding to be based on need, with organisations providing vital services for hard pressed families in working class areas given precedence.
Last month Blackbird Leys Parish council awarded £2500 to the Dovecote after IWCA councillor Lee Cole took over as chair and called on residents to decide how parish funds should be spent.
Labour responds to threats to funding for multicultural project
The final straw came when the IWCA submitted a motion to the recent full council meeting, arguing that a council-funded project to create special 'champions' for Oxford's black and ethnic minority communities be scrapped and the money spent on the Dovecote instead.
The IWCA’s Stuart Craft commented, ‘The allocation of precious funds in this way, along ethnic lines, will be seen as a stab in the back to many of the majority of non-ethnic minority council tax-payers in Oxford and also runs the risk of encouraging hostility towards those receiving this special treatment.
‘We would argue that Blackbird Leys is a community, not a black community and a white community or whatever. It's unhelpful to talk about separate communities.’
In response to the IWCA motion, Labour councillor and Executive Board member, Antonia Bance, proposed an amendment to an Executive Board decision pulling out an extra £20,000, seemingly from nowhere, for the Dovecote.
This move was particularly surprising considering Labour councillors’ previous insistence that funding the Dovecote is not the city council’s responsibility but that of the county. The IWCA seized the opportunity to at last secure money for running the centre by supporting the amendment with enthusiasm.
Needless to say, when the IWCA motion to cut the ‘ethnic minority champions’ project came up, Cllr Bance said pointedly, ‘Well there’s no need for this motion now is there.’
This only helps to confirm suspicions that it is only when Labour’s key concerns—such as divisive multicultural schemes—come under threat that they are prepared to come up with funding for important social projects aimed at the whole community.
Nonetheless, regardless of New Labour point scoring, after persistent efforts by Dovecote staff and residents—backed by the IWCA in the council chamber—the Dovecote is now secure for another year.
This centre is a valuable community resource and its dedicated staff cater to all families, whatever their ethnic background. The IWCA is proud to have played a part in securing its immediate future.
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