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Supporters campaign to save under-threat Selsdon Centre

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The trustees of an old people’s charity in Selsdon that is under threat of closure after Mayor Jason Perry axed their annual council grant have launched a petition appealing for public support.

No help: how someone ‘altered’ the council logo on the Centre’s written appeal

As Inside Croydon revealed last week, the Selsdon Centre for the Retired has been hit by a double-whammy by the council: as well as the complete withdrawal of their annual grant, their landlords have also given them a sharp increase in their rent. Their landlord is the Conservative-controlled Croydon Council.

“Without a significant cash injection over the next few months, the centre will have to close its doors and we will have to institute the voluntary liquidation of the charity in the spring of next year,” Nick Bonneywell, the chair of trustees wrote to supporters earlier this month.

The petition was started on Change.org yesterday. It states straightforwardly: “Please sign to ask Croydon Council to reinstate funding so we can keep the Selsdon Centre for the Retired from closing due to withdrawal of funds.”

Croydon Council is making £30million-worth of cuts to services and spending this year, on top of £90million of cuts in the previous two financial years, as it grapples with a £1.3billion debt that was built up over the past decade by Labour and Tory administrations.

As part of this year’s cuts, all grants to voluntary organisations and charities have been axed, affecting around 50 different groups, including the Selsdon Centre for the Retired.

Like many of the organisations around the borough affected by the cuts, the Selsdon Centre provides vital services to the elderly and vulnerable at a fraction of the cost if delivered by a council contractor.

Among the reasons given by supporters for signing the petition, one wrote, “It’s so short-sighted of the council to not help keep the centre open. The activities there will keep the people who attend well, and without it, it will be the council who end up picking up the bill.”

Another wrote, “Centres like this stop isolation for an increasingly elderly population.”

Councillor: Robert Ward is among those who uses the Centre

A third supporter, who says that her late mother used to use the centre, wrote, “This is a much-needed lifeline to many of our elderly residents. Stop taking things away from them.”

In March, when Mayor Perry forced through his council budget, as well as the cuts to the voluntary sector, he also increased Council Tax by 15per cent.

That was not the only thing Perry increased: the Mayor’s pay from the council went up by £2,000 per year, to £84,000 – or more than six times the £13,500 annual grant that used to be paid to the Selsdon Centre for the Retired.

The organisers of the petition are hoping to present as many signatures as possible when Selsdon’s councillors return from the summer break for their first ward surgery.

Councillors from two wards – Selsdon and Addington Village (Joseph Lee and Robert Ward) together with Selsdon Vale and Forestdale (Andy Stranack and Fatima Zaman) – hold their monthly surgery meetings at… the Selsdon Centre for the Retired.

The next scheduled surgery meeting is on Saturday September 2, from 10am, and officials from the under-threat charity are asking all supporters to turn up to lobby Mayor Perry’s Conservative colleagues to see whether “something can be done so we can continue to support the elderly and retired of the community to have a safe space to meet with friends and enjoy some entertainment or have a home-cooked meal”, they say.


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