This week has provided the people of Leicester will yet another reminder of how our city’s Labour-run Council are happy to implement Tory-like policies that punish ordinary people and their children. Yet it is not as if our Labour Council has not been forced to backtrack on threatening to slash funding for Leicester’s nine cherished adventure playgrounds before. So the latest saga began again on Tuesday, when “Highfields Play Ground” made the following post on Facebook:
“In October we received a letter from the Council outlining the financial situation they are in, we subsequently received assurances that this year they would try to help us survive. Last Friday they gave us two months notice of a percentage cut in funding. It would appear they have fed us to the dogs.
“The playgrounds have been around for 40 to 50 years in this City, that is meaningful. We need your help..” (Facebook, February 6, 2024)
The following day, the nine playgrounds launched a campaign to try to stop the proposed cuts. This led “Playbarn Northfields” to share a petition to gather public support. Their Facebook post noted:
“Please sign and share our Petition…
“As many of you may be aware Leicester’s 9 Adventure Playgrounds are facing cuts to our service. The Playgrounds have served our local communities for decades, providing young people a fun and friendly safe space to play, learn and make new friends. The proposed cuts will start this April and continue until March 2025 when ALL funding will be withdrawn, resulting in the closure of a much needed service.
“For years Adventure Playgrounds have been used daily by generations of family members helping these young people to create everlasting memories. To help save the playgrounds we need as much feedback and support as possible. We plan to send this petition to the local council in hope that they can see funding services like ours are vital for the community.
If you can get as many people as you can to sign the petition and even share their thoughts or memories for what Adventure Playgrounds mean to them we would be very grateful for your support.” (Facebook, February 7, 2024)
With the Council’s budget setting meeting set to take place on February 21, the playgrounds announced their plans to mobilise a huge protest on Town Hall Square to coincide with this meeting. Hundreds of people have turned out for earlier playground related protests, and the Labour councillors running the city must have started to get worried. Thus, late at night on Thursday, the “St Andrews Play Association” announced the breaking news about their collective victory. Their Facebook post noted:
“IMPORTANT UPDATE
“Dear all, thank you for the messages of help a support.
“After we were told by two officers of the council that we would be subject to a percentage cut in funding after April, contradicting a previous assurance that we would not be cut in this period. We are pleased to let you know that after several days of meetings and lobbying and in part due to the level of support across the City from you all, last night we received an email from the council stating that there would be NO cuts to any of the playgrounds. This was backed up by BBC radio Leicester who received a press release to the same effect. WE will be seeking further comfirmation and clarification but are fairly confident that we are safe, at least for the time being.
“Once again, many thanks for your support, it really does make a difference.
“If any of you feel up to it, please contact your local City Councillor and tell them what the playground means to you. Thanks x” (Facebook, February 8, 2024)
This was an amazing win and provides a perfect illustration showing how when ordinary people get organised they have real power to effect positive change!
As it happens, on the night of the announced victory, the City Council had held an “Overview Select Committee” meeting where the issue of the playground cuts was raised by Labour Party councillor Sue Waddington. In her useful contribution to the meeting Cllr Waddington made the point that all of the city councillors, including those on the Council’s scrutiny committee, were being “kept in the dark” about the Council’s ongoing cuts to services – a concerning point that has been repeatedly made over the years. She noted how someone from the adventure playgrounds had called her and told her “that their budget was going to cease entirely.”[1]
Cllr Waddington said she would fight such a decision but importantly added that she wanted assurances going forward that councillors would have information about services for which Council officials had been tasked with cutting. This point was agreed by all present at the meeting, including by the Labour City Mayor Sir Peter Soulsby. This is significant because if the City Mayor is forced to follow through with this promise, then having such information would make fighting cuts easier for the people of Leicester who are indeed kept in the dark until the last minute about proposed cuts to their vital services.
That being said, the City Mayor remained adamant that no such plans for cutting the adventure playgrounds funding had ever been outlined in the Council’s documents that were under discussion at the meeting… which was precisely Cllr Waddington’s problem. As at present the areas to be cut are never outlined! Thus, Sir Peter Soulsby, the single man in charge of the City Council, simply pled ignorance of the actions that had been undertaken by council officials and said:
“There is absolutely no reference at all in these current papers to the adventure playgrounds in the coming year getting anything other than the current level of funding. I don’t know what has been said to them, but that is the case. But it is right that they and others should know that it is going to be tough times ahead and to not be taken by surprise if in subsequent years the current level of funding is not available. That is not to say it won’t be, but I think it would be irresponsible for there not to be some frank discussions with them about how they are viewing the future and get them in some way geared up to argue the case for themselves, but also to look what else might be available by the way of funding. (Leicester City Council Overview Select Committee, February 8, 2024, at 1hr 05)
Here Soulsby doesn’t give the people of Leicester much hope that more money will ever be available for vital community services in future years. This is because he is fully aware that even if a Labour government was elected later this year, such a government would most likely continue to implement Tory austerity. This much was made obvious when Sir Keir Starmer visited Loughborough last month and was asked by the Leicester Mercury if he would make additional funding available for local authorities. The newspaper reported him as making the Tory-like reply: “We’ll have to live within the constraints of an economy that’s been badly damaged in the last 14 years. So I’m not going to make promises I can’t keep.”
This underlines the urgent need for socialists and community activists to continue to fight for political representation that serves the interests of the working-class not the interest of the billionaire-class! And it certainly doesn’t look like the Labour Party will ever provide such representation ever again.
[1] Cllr Sue Waddington referred to Section 2.8 in the draft “Revenue Budget Report 2024/25”. She said: “faced with a difficult financial situation the Council is in during the forthcoming financial year and even now, ‘a root and branch review is going to take place. This means a lot of discretionary services will be under threat. Such a review will commence in January.’ And this is I think where we need to be far more transparent about what is exactly happening. First of all, I have yet to see a list of discretionary services and it might be obvious to some but not to all exactly which services are designated as being discretionary… So it would be helpful to have a list of the discretionary services, and that the work that is being undertaken be brought to the [Council scrutiny] Commissions. The Economic Development Commission did recommend [at their meeting held on January 31, 2024] that the Commission receive a report on the work done by the Executive in January on the 25/26 budget reduction and the areas under review. Since that was agreed by the Economic Development Commission I received a call for help from the adventure playground because they had apparently been told, and now this is their understanding, which may be completely wrong, but because I had not been informed (at this stage), I had no way of correcting their impression. They had been told that their budget was going to cease entirely. So this is an illustration, if people are coming to me [about continuing community service provision], if these things are under review then I understand that for some of them the answer may not be what they want to hear. The answer may be, yes there are going to be reductions in this area of service, but it would be very helpful if the Commissions and this Commission could be aware of what is under review… I don’t really feel that we need to be kept in the dark about this. Everyone knows we are in a financial crisis and local government and Leicester City Council are facing a very difficult year… So I would like to see in the recommendations at the end of this discussion that scrutiny is involved in the review of those services that are under examination for reduction.”
Thoughts of a Leicester Socialist 