Council’s £50,000 attack on volunteer-run social centre

Press release from The Com­mon Place, for imme­di­ate release 7pm 27th Feb 2009
Today Leeds city cen­tre’s vol­un­teer-run com­mu­ni­ty space The Com­mon Place lost the court bat­tle to keep its enter­tain­ment licence (1). After three prob­lem-free years the licence was with­drawn by Leeds City Coun­cil in July 2008 leav­ing the social cen­tre with­out its main income. Leeds City Coun­cil per­ceived The Com­mon Place as not being a true mem­bers club as we are open to huge vari­ety of events and types of peo­ple. This open­ness had also led to lax pro­ce­dures when sign­ing non-mem­bers in, a con­di­tion of the licence.

The Com­mon Place is a space used by many of the most mar­gin­alised and vul­ner­a­ble mem­bers of soci­ety (2). Carl Gal­lager of Zer­man­sky and Part­ners, act­ing for The Com­mon Place esti­mates that Leeds City Coun­cil have spent in excess of £50 000 bring­ing this case to court in a attempt to shut down the cen­tre, despite a cho­rus of sup­port from dozens of groups who use the cen­tre and over 1000 mes­sages of sup­port (3).

Com­mon Place Vol­un­teer Amy Stephen­son said, “It beg­gars belief that despite the deep­en­ing reces­sion and the lack of afford­able, social city cen­tre venues that the coun­cil has spent so much time and effort on the clo­sure of this much-loved resource.”

Dom Marsh said, “The Com­mon Place is exact­ly the sort of place that the coun­cil should be encour­ag­ing. It pro­vides free space to groups who might strug­gle to find afford­able spaces as well as an amaz­ing gig venue for up-and-com­ing local per­form­ers.”

The Com­mon Place Man­age­ment Com­mit­tee repeat­ed­ly attempt­ed to meet with the Coun­cil licens­ing depart­ment to avoid a court case and to reas­sure them of our sta­tus and capa­bil­i­ty as a mem­bers’ club. How­ev­er, this attempt to iden­ti­fy and rec­ti­fy any per­ceived prob­lems was reject­ed out­right by the coun­cil.

The future of the Com­mon Place is now under seri­ous threat. With­out licensed events the abil­i­ty of the social cen­tre to pro­vide a resource to the peo­ple of Leeds is uncer­tain.

Notes
1) The Com­mon Place is a vol­un­teer run mem­bers club and social cen­tre at Wharf Street LS1 — details at www.thecommonplace.org.uk
2) The Com­mon Place is used by groups includ­ing the award win­ning Com­mon Con­ver­sa­tion, The Per­ma­cul­ture Asso­ci­a­tion, The Unit­ed Refugee Organ­i­sa­tion, TIDAL (a Leeds-based fair trade asso­ci­a­tion), The­atre Under Fire, St. Anne’s Home­less Sup­port, Leeds Domes­tic Vio­lence Part­ner­ship
3) The com­mon place received over 1100 on-line sig­na­tures on it’s peti­tion and over 30 let­ters of sup­port from indi­vid­u­als and groups includ­ing The Refuge Coun­cil, Leeds Met­ro­pol­i­tan Uni­ver­si­ty Union, Leeds Uni­ver­si­ty Union, Church Action on Pover­ty, Leeds Step­ping Out, Ladyfest Leeds, The Healthy Liv­ing Net­work.
4) Con­tact: Paul Chat­ter­ton 07894340531