• BACK in 2016 Hyde Housing announced a review of their six community centres across London, including the Ringcross Community Centre in Holloway, in a way that implied that they wanted to sell them as commercial assets.

Local people did not want to lose their community centres and quickly organised, getting support from their local councils and even getting the matter raised in the House of Commons.

Hyde quickly changed course and, in 2017, announced that they would lease the buildings to local community organisations – in the case of the Ringcross Community Centre it was a local charity, the Pilion Trust.

The vehicle chosen by the Holloway campaigners was to revive the Friends of Ringcross Community Centre, which had been dormant for a number of years.

This enabled the group to access some funds in the friends’ bank account, although most of the money had been transferred to Hyde. The friends believed that this money belongs to the group but were unable to get Hyde to return it.

As Pilion had not previously run a community centre, the friends continued to meet to monitor the situation but have not met since 2019, before the Covid-19 lockdown. Pilion has continued to run the centre and to show its capability to run the centre.

It is a waste of assets to have the group once again dormant and so a special general meeting has been proposed to dissolve the Friends of Ringcross Community Centre and donate its assets.

This meeting will be held at the Ringcross Community Centre, 60 Lough Road, London N7 8RH at 4pm on Sunday November 27.

BARRY EDWARDS
Chair, Friends of Ringcross Community Centre
Holloway, N7