• WARWICK Sharp, (Letters, January 14) is absolutely right to be concerned about the funding for the excellent Maiden Lane estate youth club.
The stop-gap “solution” of temporary funding will shortly run out, and then what?
Residents of the estate well remember the way our ward councillors sent round a leaflet on the estate pretending that they were not responsible for this cut and announcing a bogus “campaign” to get it restored, omitting to mention that it was their Liberal Democrat-controlled administration which instituted the cut in the first place.
In the same issue of the New Journal we see our ward councillor, Paul Braithwaite, trying to excuse his own council for their neglect of the gritting and salting of pavements across the borough during the recent snow. Once again, he tries to blame others for his own party’s failures: in this case he blames central government!
We are tired of this buck-passing.
Dr PETER PRESTON
Save All Our Homes Campaign
www.MaidenLaneEstate.org
 

Partners

• I AM writing on behalf of the directors of Maiden Lane Community Centre in response to the letter from Warwick Sharp (January 14).
Maiden Lane Community Centre works with a range of partners to address local issues and provide services that meet the needs of our community. When the cut to our youth club funding was announced, local people expressed their deep concern at the damage that would be inflicted on young people and the community as a whole, if this crucial service was withdrawn.
The directors of the community centre, being fully committed to the centre’s work with young people, took the decision to engage with those individuals and organisations prepared to help them safeguard Maiden Lane Youth Club.
A wide range of partners have joined the community centre’s directors, the young people and the local community to seek a solution and help us obtain sufficient financial resources to secure the service until we can apply for further funding from Camden. 
In particular our ward councillors and Camden Council officers have committed considerable time and energy to identifying alternative funding sources and working together we have now secured sufficient funds to safeguard the service for the next 18 months.
MARION PIKE
Secretary to the Directors of Maiden Lane Community Centre
 

Extra money

• LABOUR candidate Warwick Sharp wrote (January 14) to tell us about the cuts to the funding for Maiden Lane Community Centre.
What he wrote was completely inaccurate. The fact are these.
In August, Maiden Lane was unsuccessful in bidding for its usual £35,000 revenue fund.
We, the Liberal Democrat ward councillors and executive member Janet Grauberg, were determined to plug that gap, and we did.
We found the £15,000 Warwick Sharp mentions and then we fought for and won a further £111,000 of funding from our planning department.
So not only does the community centre have £45,000 worth of revenue this year (an increase of 30 per cent) but it also has an extra £80,000 with which to build a new recording studio for young people.
No community centre gets funding settlements for more than 18 months, something we are looking to change.
In the meantime therefore, Maiden Lane, like every other community centre, cannot be sure of its long-term funding.
However, it is an excellent facility with really fantastic staff and I am confident that if we all work together it will continue to thrive.
But inaccurate scaremongering to win votes will not help anyone.
Cllr FRED CARVER
Liberal Democrat,
Cantelowes ward