Motion to build new community hub for voluntary sector in Northampton is voted down

Labour leader Danielle Stone called on the council to create a community hub with shared storage and safe meeting spaces. This would help groups such as the many foodbank charities in the town have storage and distribution points, while it would also offer a safe meeting space for younger and older people.

But the motion was defeated when councillors voted on it at last week's full council meeting (September 14) of Northampton Borough Council.

Speaking prior to the vote, Councillor Stone said: “This motion calls on the council to further develop our relationship with the voluntary sector and in particular to recognise the need for infrastructure, and the need for bigger and better community hubs from where multi-agency grassroots services can be run.

“You will have seen the difficulties some groups have with food parcel distribution, using small hubs where they can’t provide storage. All the food being parceled up is being kept in peoples’ private homes, which is not a good idea.

“Food poverty and foodbanks are not going to go away. We need to be thinking about how we’re going to support community efforts to get people in the town fed by building a better infrastructure to build their needs.”

But the Conservative cabinet member for community, Councillor Anna King, said that the motion had ‘too many elements’ which made it difficult to support.

She said: “The voluntary sector here in Northampton is absolutely amazing and we work with lots of them already.

“A youth hub has come up numerous times before. You will remember Councillor Stone the steering group we set up for youth practice, and talking to members that came to that it was brought to our attention that they don’t all want to work in the same space, they like their individual spaces.

“We have a youth centre that we will be opening in town, but it has been delayed due to COVID and was due to open in August. But we’re still going ahead with it, and it will be a safe and secure place for young people to go to.”

Councillor King also highlighted that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs was due to be working soon with the Hope Centre, and co-ordinating all of the food bank groups. She said that grant funding the council was going to receive would help address the problem with a lack of storage for the groups.

She concluded: “I think the motion is just a bit too much and has too many strands. We won’t be supporting this, but we’re glad that a lot of this is taking place already.”

Liberal Democrat leader Sally Beardsworth said she would be backing Labour’s motion, as the voluntary sector ‘needs all the help it can get’. She added: “What this is asking for is very simple, you don’t have to give everything at once. But to find a place where they can store the food would be a start and would be a huge help to them. Small steps are what are needed for us to move forward.”

Reacting to her motion defeat, Councillor Stone said she was ‘shocked’ the Conservative administration was not supporting it, and said the authority had rejected a chance to be a ‘catalyst to help the voluntary sector’.

But council leader Jonathan Nunn said that any suggestion that councillors who had voted against the motion were against the ‘great work’ the voluntary sector was doing was incorrect.

He said: “Let’s not get this mixed up. We’ve said good governance is good democracy, but this motion is neither. We already have a huge number of groups that we work with and support, but simply handing the keys to a building over is not the solution. Please, let’s have a business case, and I promise you we will do everything we can.”