The Community Centre is getting a facelift. It’s going to be refurbished and modernised. It’ll be bigger, with two separate spaces for parties, a larger courtyard and a community café making it even more inviting to visitors.
Once Lambeth Council gives planning permission, work will get started. And even though the Community Centre will need to close for a while, KPCC Oval will continue. Our regular groups and activities are relocating to nearby premises, we’ll still be able to find space for meetings and small parties, and kids’ holiday activities will be continuing in a new home.
The Chair of KPCC’s Trustees explains what is happening, why and when, answers some of your questions, and busts a few myths.
Is the Community Centre being demolished?
No!
The Centre is getting old and needs a lot of work to keep it running smoothly. Rather than doing this in an unsatisfactory and expensive piecemeal fashion, its owners, the Hyde Group, are going to invest in fully refurbishing the building, modernising it so that it’s future-proof and meets the latest building standards, and in the process enlarging it and making it more energy efficient.
It is being retrofitted, not knocked down.
What does refurbishment mean?
The best features of the current building will be retained, particularly the Main Hall with its fabulous high ceiling.
The acoustics, lighting and audio/visual equipment will be updated so the space meets the needs of our drama students and the other creative groups who use it, as well as making it a great venue for residents’ parties, children’s activities, meetings and conferences.
Next to the Main Hall, the Community Room will be extended, making it better for meetings or small parties, for breakout rooms, creches, party buffets, the students’ green room, or for more than one group to use the Centre at a time. The toilets will be rebuilt, the kitchen enlarged, and the other rooms renovated.
The fire exit doors will be replaced and the courtyard levelled off so that the concrete ramps can be removed, providing improved disabled access. There will be extra secure storage inside and outside the Centre.
The high fence separating the Centre from the front of the site will be removed, so that we have a much larger and more inviting courtyard, with movable planters, a statement tree and a wooden canopy going round the periphery. The main entrance will be accessed by steps and modern ramps, replacing the current slope.
What is happening to the Arts Depot?
It is being demolished, to be replaced by a new café and activity space on the ground floor and eight social rent apartments above.
Why?
The Arts Depot site belongs to Hyde but is not part of the Community Centre. Unlike the Centre, it is designated by the Council as a commercial building and liable to business rates.
The building stood empty for many years, until Hyde gave Shannon permission to occupy and renovate it during the 2020 lockdown. She and Dukes have turned it into a welcoming venue, prioritising creative activities. However, despite their endeavours, there are problems with the building which cannot be easily overcome – such as internal access to the toilet being from just one room. Moreover, Shannon’s business model is unlikely to prove financially sustainable going into the future, as much of her income comes from charging rent for use of part of the premises, or grants channelled through, or provided by, KPCC, such as for the kids’ holiday activities, which she is paid to run by KPCC with funding from Lambeth Council.
In order for the work on the Centre to be affordable, Hyde needs to be able to add grant funding from the GLA to their own contribution of at least a million pounds, and the grant funding is only available if it is for new housing. None of this money will come from our rents or service charges, and it cannot be spent on maintenance.
Hyde originally planned to demolish both the Community Centre and the Arts Depot and replace them with a smaller Centre topped by a mass of 15 apartments. Residents objected strongly to this plan and called for the Centre to be refurbished rather than demolished. This is what is happening, and the revised model, retaining the Centre and reducing the number of apartments to eight at just the front of the site has proved far more acceptable, especially as these apartments will be let as social housing (ie. their rents will be on the same basis as those of us who are Hyde tenants on Kennington Park Estate). Unfortunately, it is not possible to squeeze any housing onto the site other than in the space occupied by the Arts Depot.
What will replace the Arts Depot?
A large new space will be created fronting onto Harleyford Street, which we aim to turn into an activity space for young people, but which will also be available for parties and other activities. We don’t want to lose the creative focus which has been developed at the Arts Depot and will be open to ideas and suggestions from Estate residents and local people on how best to continue to develop it.
Next door will be a café, open to street customers as well as residents. We’re talking to Alex of Sexi Coffee about staying with us to run the café. Appropriate safeguarding measures will be taken when some activities are taking place in the Centre and/or which have priority use of the courtyard, but at other times customers will be able to sit at tables in the courtyard or out front as well as inside.
What about the Arts Depot’s plants and trees?
Landscape architects have planned the site’s environmental aspects. The green fence will be removed, and the two yards will merge, featuring mobile planters for children’s gardening and to demarcate different parts of the yard for different activities. Current plants will be relocated around the Estate, including in the community garden, during construction, with the best ones returning to the Centre if possible. Additionally, a new green seating area will be created at the café’s front.
Who will occupy the new building?
The plan is for KPCC CBS to be offered the lease for the whole of the site, covering both the Community Centre and the new buildings (apart from the housing). We will then sub-let the new spaces.
Simply Smiley Productions (Shannon’s private company) is currently a commercial tenant who doesn’t pay rent, and Hyde has served notice for her to leave by the end of April so that work can begin. It will then be for KPCC’s Board to determine who rents the new spaces. Disappointingly, at the time of writing, there has been no indication that SSP wishes to enter into negotiations to occupy any part of the new building.
Who will move into the new flats?
The new flats will be social rent and Lambeth Council, not Hyde, determines who is allocated new tenancies on the Estate. Lambeth has the largest waiting list of any local authority in London with over 25,000 households on its housing register.
When is building work likely to start? And finish?
Hyde is waiting for the Council to determine its planning application and then hopes to start work in summer 2025. KPCC is vacating the Centre at the beginning of April so that the building can be cleared.
Hyde hopes that the work will be finished by the end of 2026. We hope so too!
Where will our regular activities go while the Centre is closed?
Hyde has given a commitment that no building work will start until all our regular users have been found a new, temporary home.
All In Actors (the drama school) has already arranged to move to Montgomery Hall, and it is likely that Zumba and other similar exercise classes will also move there.
Hyde is leasing their Magee Street office to us so that we can have office space there and activities such as meetings will be able to continue. It should be large enough for smallish children’s parties, for our Monday Lunch Club, and for new activities which don’t need a large space.
Most importantly, we are discussing with Henry Fawcett School the possibility of KPCC and HFS jointly running the kids’ holiday activities at the school.
Will you charge more when you reopen?
We took over the Centre in 2017 and have never increased our charges! KPE residents get a 50% discount for social events, and our charges for community events are very reasonable. In fact, a large proportion of the community events taking place in the Centre are not charged anything for use of the space.
Apart from possibly reviewing our charges for businesses who want to use our excellent new facilities for conferences or presentations, we are unlikely to charge more as we know that our local community can’t afford to pay more!
Who runs KPCC?
KPE’s Tenants’ & Residents’ Association agreed a Licence to Occupy with Hyde in 2017. KPCC Community Benefit Society was then set up so that the Centre could be run on a cooperative and democratic basis. It is registered with the Financial Conduct Authority as a charity.
We have had a Lease with Hyde since 2019, which means that we are responsible for hiring out the space and the day-to-day running of the Centre, including paying for all utilities, etc, while Hyde as our landlord is responsible for major repairs and maintenance.
Our income comes from letting the space to users, grants for specific activities and the occasional donation.
Anyone who supports our objects can become a member of the CBS – application forms are available on our website.
We hold an Annual General Meeting where members elect the Board of Trustees. Our current Board comprises a mixture of Kennington Park Estate residents (both tenants and leaseholders), key regular user group leaders, one of our local councillors and several local supporters, bringing a range of skills and experiences to the important business of running the Centre.
Our Trustees are all unpaid volunteers.
Do the Trustees support Hyde’s plans?
The Trustees were opposed to Hyde’s original plans for the Community Centre, and it was only after these were substantially changed to take account of residents’ views that the Trustees, after lengthy discussions, decided to support the plans. Throughout this process we have regretted the loss of the Arts Depot and have urged Shannon and other Depot users to get involved in planning the new development.
Hyde has enabled the Trustees to discuss the detail of the plans with the architects and guaranteed continued involvement in the design process as work goes forward.
If you have further questions or want more information about the refurbishment and redevelopment of the Community Centre site, please email kpccoval@gmail.com.
JT/ January 2025