Shepherd's Bush Village Hall among buildings to be sold
A huge protest is planned outside Hammersmith Town Hall in King Street at 6pm tonight, Monday February 7 ahead of a Hammersmith and Fulham council cabinet meeting at 7pm which is expected to rubber stamp its plans to sell off of nine council buildings.
Local people will include a new campaign group formed to Save the Village Hall
The Village Hall, at 58 Bulwer Street, currently houses the Shepherd's Bush Community Association, Shepherd's Bush Families Project and West and North West London Vietnamese Association is used regularly by three faith groups, a dance
school and young people’s sports group, with additional regular alterative
therapies operating from the centre.
However a report recommends that the cabinet at tonight's meeting agrees to sell the building, saying " it is declared too costly to
keep and maintain and can be released for
disposal."
Gordon Joly, who runs the campaign's blog, says: "It is important that all supporters of the Village Hall should attend, and there will be as speaker who will talk for all the Hall users."
Other buildings which the council intends to sell include Hammersmith's Palingswick House, earmarked for Toby Young's West London Free School, the Irish Centre in Blacks Road, Fulham Town Hall and Sands End Community Centre.
Hammersmith MP Andy Slaughter says: "They are selling off invaluable community assets at a time of depressed property prices. And they are acting against the central tenet of their own government – the Big Society.
" I will be there on Monday protesting their short-sighted policies and hundreds of people, of all political stripes from all parts of our community, will be there too. "
The council says it plans to sell the "under-used" buildings in order to help pay off its £133 million historic debt and reduce the impact of the public sector funding squeeze on its frontline services.
It says a detailed consultation was carried out over the Autumn on the proposals which resulted in a report recommending that Cabinet:
approve the sale of Fulham Town Hall, Palingswick House, the Distillery Lane centre, 58 Bulwer Street, Askham Centre and the Greswell centre;
approve that leases on Cambridge House, Barclay House and 20 Hammersmith Broadway are not renewed;
revoke the Cabinet decision of January 2009 to extend the lease of the Irish Cultural Centre so that it can be offered for sale to the sitting tenant – the Irish Cultural Centre Hammersmith Ltd.
defer the decision on 50 Commonwealth Avenue pending the outcome of the Day Opportunities review and until an alternative site is agreed for the existing occupants.
February 7, 2011