Labour Bullying with Playground Cuts

Leicester has nine amazing (if serially underfunded) adventure playgrounds spread out across our fine city, all of which provide vital services to our communities; providing nurturing and fun environments for our children in some of our most hard-done-by estates. Considering that all children can use these facilities for free, these essential public services come at a fairly marginal financial cost to the taxpayer. Nevertheless it is a low cost that our privatising-loving Labour Council have long been reluctant to shoulder.

Thus we have the dire situation where for the past eight years the already meagre operating budgets of these playgrounds has been frozen at around £100,000 per year (for each centre); not a problem that bears any relation to Sir Peter Soulsby’s salary. Take for instance the example of Northfields Playbarn on Gypsy Lane, whose budget has remained static at approximately £120,000 for the past eight years.

That the nine playgrounds’ budgets have even remained frozen and were slashed earlier, no doubt owes much to the fact they they successfully organised protests when the then Liberal/Tory Council tore whopping holes out of their funds in 2004. With Northfields Playbarn alone losing £20,000 from their annual budget.

Yet Northfields Playbarn still manages to employ three full-time staff on the Council’s paltry funding — in addition, that is, to meeting all the costs of running, maintaining and extending their diverse grounds and buildings. It would be hard to believe that better value for money could have been extracted from the Council’s reluctant purse; especially as the staff, working alongside the children, boost their limited finances by drawing further money into the city from all manner of charitable sources, like Big Lottery funds.

Or take for instance the three-year £83,000 grant that Northfields Playbarn successfully obtained from Children In Need, which pays the salary of one of their full-time staff and supports other assorted projects at the centre. All positive achievements that have been explicitly ignored within the Council’s deranged (and anti-democratic) decision-making process, which also pays no heed to the huge amount of voluntary time that all playground staff put into making sure their centres are a hive of community activity.

Such voluntary dedication engenders immense goodwill from local residents, who over the decades have consequently given untold hours of their time to making sure the centre flourishes. Just as volunteers and staff at Northfields Playbarn did earlier this month when they organized a local bonfire and firework display: an event that was only necessary because of Council cuts elsewhere.

Such success stories are undertaken in the face of escalating adversity, which earlier this year saw £15,000 cut from the budget of Northfields Playbarn, when the Council, in all their ‘infinite wisdom,’ decided that the playground should no longer cater to the needs of under five-year-olds (something they have been doing successfully for many years). Unfortunately, this now puts local parents in the difficult situation of having to pay to have their children attend the privately-run Bright Bees Nursery just a few hundred metres down the hill. This despite the fact that the Playbarn has an amazing purpose-designed play area for under fives (see picture below).

In this climate of ongoing hostility, workers at the playgrounds realised something was awry, when during the summer, a mysterious corporate consultant working for the Council paid each centre a fly-by visit to gently quiz them about their operations. But preferring to keep the workers in the dark, the Council failed to tell them about the devious and underhand purpose of the visits: even going so far as assuring them that they had nothing to fear from the consultant.

However the consultants mission soon became apparent when the playground staff found themselves in the bizarre position of having to answer questions about where they could save money or make cuts to their services; and had to parry off questions about what they thought of the feasibility of charging children to use their centres. Especially with regard the latter point, the workers made it clear that since their mandate for existence was to help disadvantaged children, charging children was out of the question, and would simply result in their having to close for lack of children (that is, if parents had to pay for their services).

Between the time of the consultants visit and the present day, management from across the nine playgrounds have met with the Council’s hardened children’s budget slasher, Vi Dempster, who assured them on two separate occasions they had nothing to worry about, and that the Council would not be closing their playgrounds. This flew in the face of reality. This is because last Thursday (14th November), at 5.30pm, the Council dumped the shocking news of their massive cuts agenda upon the playground management: news that ultimately precipitated Monday’s (18th November) inspiring protest.

Evidently it had been decided from high above that the Council need not consult the playground workers about their livelihoods, or for that matter, the futures of the children left in their charge. Indeed, at Thursday’s shock-therapy-styled ‘consultation,’ not one of the workers’ questions were answered by the Council, or by the mealy-mouthed consultant who proceeded to bend the truth beyond belief.

To heap insult upon injury, the individual with whom the workers were informed they should take their questions and grievances to prior to the Labour Group meeting on Monday — when the decision on the cuts would be discussed (and agreed upon) — was, believe it or not, away on annual leave!

Given the short notice of all these proceedings, the size of the 200-strong protest on Monday afternoon was all the more impressive, especially considering the fact that the organisers actually only found out about the proposed Labour Group meeting late on Friday afternoon.

One can only imagine how many protesters will make it to town this Thursday to vocalise their dissent at the full Council meeting, or how many more might have been mobilised if the Council had consulted with the workers in a democratic fashion! Maybe, if given time, the playground workers would have organized another triumphant march through town like they did in 2004; and maybe they still will do, especially if the Council continues to ignore their very reasonable demands.

The icing on the Council’s latest devious power-play is further revealed by the fact that it seems that even Labour Councillors were kept in the dark about these attacks upon the city’s adventure playgrounds, with some claiming that the first they heard of it was last Friday. That said, it is clear-cut; such Labour Councillors should now act if they want to side with their electorate. But we should put nothing past a Labour Council, for they are wedded to passing on the Tories’ vile attacks to public services as their duty.

If the cuts go ahead and the management of all Leicester’s adventure playgrounds are put out to tender on Thursday, it will provide further evidence of the need for normal members of the working-class to stand as electoral candidates. And one group in which they might affiliate for such purposes is the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC), which stands firmly and principally opposed to all public-sector cuts.

Unfortunately if you were to happen to read the Leicester Mercury’s (mis)reporting on Monday’s protest and the background to the proposed cuts, one might believe (wrongly) that this was all just a storm in a teacup. But the fact of the matter is that the cuts that Labour aim to ratify on Thursday will result in full-time workers having their hours reduced from 37 hours per week to just 15; and the closure of the playgrounds for two months every year in December and January, even though December is actually being one of busiest months for the playgrounds (contrary to the boulder-dash propagated by the consultant).

If such a drastic cut in hours was agreed upon by the Labour Council the playgrounds’ full-time staff would be forced to quit to find full-time work elsewhere. The decision-makers at the Council have of course always been fully aware of this, and so they knew exactly what they were doing by dropping the bombshell upon the playground workers last Thursday!

Thankfully, neither the children nor the playground workers are taking the Council’s utter disrespect for them easily, and having already organised one massive protest on Monday, are now preparing for an even bigger one for this Thursday. So spread the good news and make sure you get your family and friends down the Town Hall Square this Thursday between 4 and 6pm; as it seems that it is only through such direct action that we will be able to encourage our Labour Council to take-up their democratic duty and oppose the Government and all the cuts.

Next steps

• Share this article
• Actively organise your friends, family and colleagues to come down to the protest on Thursday
• Link up with other groups and individuals in the city fighting the Council’s cuts, join Leicestershire Against the Cuts