Centre can be saved for less than you’d pay for small flat

Published: 24 September, 2010

• THANK you for your report (Rally to save Highbury Roundhouse, September 17). The venue is one of Islington’s oldest community centres. We have been providing services for every age group for nearly four decades. We now face a threat of demolition. 

The district surveyor closed the building at the rear of our site, saying it was in a dangerous state. We have asked our own structural engineers to inspect the building. 

The Roundhouse has appealed the decision to close the building.

We are an independent body, run as a non-profit-making company and a registered charity. 

We are responsible for the activities that take place on our site. We provide services to the community worth £360,000 a year. We have service level agreements or contracts with Islington Council for the provision of some of these services. If we cannot operate, it is most likely these services will be lost.

We have found, with help from council officials, temporary alternative accommodation for most, although not all, of the activities that take place on our premises. 

So far, we have been unable to find a suitable venue for our annual Halloween event, which caters for more than 300 people. The two options are the complete demolition of the back building, which would cost £280,000. Or the demolition of the gable wall and a rebuilding and underpinning repair of the building, which would cost around £500,000.

This means that, for the relatively small additional sum of approximately £220,000, the back building would be reinstated and the community would have use of it for the foreseeable future. It would not be possible to buy a one-room flat in Highbury for £220,000. To us, the choice seems obvious.

In the next few days the council will be asked to decide.
Tony Millan
Secretary, Highbury Roundhouse

• ALMOST every week some new problem emerges in Islington Council which was hidden because the previous Lib Dem administration swept it under the carpet.

The emergency closure of Highbury Roundhouse is the latest bit of bad news. Residents and users are quite right to be furious. But it is now abundantly clear that a decade of neglect has caused the building to dilapidate badly. The council owns the Ronald Road building and our predecessors ignored warnings about its worsening state.

Even more shocking, we now discover that £250,000 of Section 106 money earmarked for the building’s renovation was frittered away by the previous council. Endless technical and feasibility studies have whittled that lump sum down so that barely £80,000 is left.

The council is not going to demolish the Roundhouse immediately. But we have to treat the building with care. The district surveyor has declared it is dangerous and has ordered the building to be sealed off.

I hope we can indeed find a cost-effective way to make the building safe. But, until then, we are obliged to follow the district surveyor’s orders. To do anything else would mean prosecution if – god forbid – anyone was hurt from the collapse of the building.

Does this sound like the council is erring on the side of caution? Yes it does. The safety of everyone using the building has to be paramount.

Over the longer term, the council wants to completely re-provision the Roundhouse and we need to examine a number of possible options. Money is now very tight indeed so we do not have spare cash to invest. I wish we did. 

The council leadership is committed to exploring all possible options for the Roundhouse so that it can continue to thrive and serve the people of Highbury for another 40 years.
Cllr Paul Convery
Labour, executive councillor for regeneration, planning and leisure