An eagerly awaited community centre on Crouch Hill, backed by Jeremy Corbyn, will place low-cost childcare at the top its agenda.
“We are getting to the point where we need to provide more affordable childcare,” said Colin Adams, Manager of Hanley Crouch Community Association, which will move to the new site on Holly Park Estate.
Inexpensive childcare emerged as the top priority at the centre following a survey launched by Adams and his team at Tollington Ward Partnership’s Community Day on 23 October.
It asked residents what services they wanted the association to focus on at its future base.
The building, currently under construction, will open its doors in March 2017, replacing The Laundry on nearby Sparsholt Road, where the community organisation is located at present.
“With Universal Credit and changes to Working Tax Credit, more parents have got to go back into work,” Adams explained at the community event at Islington Arts and Media School.
“Working parents find it horrendously expensive to work and also provide childcare.”
Adams is considering increasing childcare capacity from 45 to 60 when Hanley Crouch Community Association makes the move.
But the manager told Islington Now that childcare is much more than a numbers game.
Flexibility is the key according to Adams: “It may mean starting earlier and finishing later [than the organisation’s current childcare provision], but that is something for the trustees and I to discuss.”
Other priorities that arose from the survey were providing space for children’s activities, adult learning, and mental health services and signposting.
Jeremy Corbyn, who is a trustee at The Laundry and has chaired a number of council meetings to plan for the new centre, added: “It’s been a long time coming, but I think we’ve got it right.
“We’ve got the design right, the venue right. We now need to make sure the small politics of it works.”
The development project will also see construction of 23 council homes on the same site.
Photo: Fred Searle
@fsearle91