NCEA Management Committee Statement
On Monday 9th September we held a community information evening at Newton Community Centre.
Meeting Objective:
1) To inform our community about the changes that West Lothian Council is proposing to make to how the community centres are run. The management committee presented the options that the council has provided for the future of the community centre:
Option 1: Community Asset Transfer
Option 2: Full Repair and Insuring lease
Option 3: Recharge to management committee
Option 4: Undefined 4th option
(further details on these options can be found on our website www.newtoncommunitycentre.org)
2) To inform our community about our financial situation and to indicate that changes would need to be made to ensure financial viability in any of the above options.
3) To determine if the community centre was a resource that our community wanted to maintain.
27 members of our community (estimated at 175 (140 over 16 years old) in 2011 by Records Scotland Census team) attended. – 19% of the adult population of Newton.
Feedback from others in the community was that they weren’t able to come at that time/day.
We asked every attendee to fill out and return a survey to us. Some surveys were taken away and given to members of the community that couldn’t attend the meeting. We received 26 completed surveys after the meeting.
The results are depicted in the infographic below .
Based on the results of the survey, we believe that our community centre is a resource that the community would like to keep open and benefiting the community, and that we as a management committee, alongside our community, have a mandate to investigate the feasibility of each of the potential options at Newton Community Centre.
Our next steps will be to contact everyone who indicated that they would be willing to help and invite them, along with our user groups, to a focus group. We will present more detailed information on how each option would relate to our community centre, further financial details, and we hope to welcome more focused feedback on our options from this group.
