Residents and councillors campaign for 'much-needed' community centre at former care home in Northampton

Northampton residents and councillors have started a campaign to get a “much-needed”' community centre for their area.

Sally Jordan, chair of Ecton Brook Residents' Group, is campaigning for West Northamptonshire Council (WNC) and Northampton Partnership Homes (NPH) to provide her community with a space to meet and hold events.

Sally said: "We've been going since 2017 as Ecton Brook Residents' Group. We have no base to actually run from which makes it very difficult to actually manage to do a lot of the things we do because we don't have anywhere to store anything or hold events.

"The main aim of the group is to make Ecton Brook a sustainable community so that we have got a community feel and people look out for each other.

"It's incredibly important to have a community centre. I run coffee mornings from my house at the minute. We have nowhere to do them.

"To actually have somewhere that we could say that once a month we could open it up, have a coffee, people drop in, that would be absolutely brilliant.

"We just need our own space. We are a small group but we try our hardest to involve everybody. We're just trying to make a community."

Joining the campaign is Conservative councillors for the area James Hill and Paul Clark.

The councillors have identified Ecton Brook care home, which is planned to be converted into social housing by NPH, as a potential location for the centre.

Councillor Hill said: "We will continue to lobby the council and NPH to try and ensure we get this much-needed facility for the area because...it's something which will make a massive difference, I think.

"Myself, local councillors and Ecton Brook Residents Group are currently lobbying West Northants Council and NPH to include a community space in the proposed redevelopment of the former Ecton Brook Care Home into social housing."

Cllr Adam Brown, from WNC, said: “We are working closely with our partner NPH to consider opportunities to build more affordable housing across our area including any potential sites in Ecton Brook. Alongside this the council is working with health and other public sector partners to establish more hubs in our local communities.”