Breathing room for community groups as deadline is dropped

CITY COUNCIL GIVES SERVICES MORE TIME TO SWITCH TO NEW FUNDING ARRANGEMENTS

- By OLIVER PRIDMORE

A "TIGHT" deadline has been dropped by the city council in its latest major U-turn on plans that could have seen scores of Nottingham's most vital services shut.

Nottingham's network of community centres are home to everything from food banks to DWP advice sessions and, despite helping some of the city's most vulnerable, the services faced the real possibility of closure under Nottingham City Council's original plans for their future.

A Post campaign running throughout 2025 saw the city council make significant concessions to protect the future of community centres and as new arrangements loom, another major change has now been announced.

Centres previously faced a March 31 deadline to legally agree to a new system which will see them becoming much more self-sufficient than before, when they were collectively provided with a city council subsidy of £600,000 a year.

But given the costs involved, including the fact that centres will become responsible for repairs, the centres said the previous "drop-dead date" of March 2026 did not provide enough time for them to work through the ramifications and that it could have seen some failing unnecessarily for the sake of a few weeks or months.