If residents believe that they will be afforded any respect or dignity from the Rotten Borough during planned “regeneration” projects in North Kensington they need only look at the shameless way the RBKC is currently treating the innocent children of Maxilla Nursery.
The Council closed down this much loved and cherished local resource claiming that they did not have the money to keep it open despite pumping millions of £££ of our Council Tax into elite “art fripperies” such as Holland Park Opera.
It has now emerged that the infants from Maxilla will not be moving to their new nursery, joining other children in Golborne Children’s Centre at the start of Autumn Term, but instead they will be shunted into the old caretakers office on Lancaster West Estate. It appears that the Golborne Children’s Centre has not yet been brought up to standard to accommodate the new influx of children from the newly closed Maxilla Nursery.
The old Lancaster West caretakers office is no place to house children all day and certainly not a suitable venue for a nursery. Not only is it small, almost windowless, dank and generally unsafe, with only the most basic of kitchen and toileting facilities, but it is also located directly adjacent to the delivery point of the Grenfell Tower Improvement Works on a dangerous congested corner full of construction and local traffic. It would be hard to imagine a more inappropriate location for a childrens’ care centre, even on the purely temporary basis that the Council apparently intends.
Meanwhile, the existing users of the Community Room (Grenfell Community Unite, the Muslim Homework Club and the Sunday Domino Group) have been unceremoniously thrown out of the same premises, until now the only remaining meeting place left for Lancaster West residents, without notice or consultation.
While local residents understand the need to find a temporary home for the Maxilla children, we believe that this problem should not be imposed on the Lancaster West community, as the refurbishment works to Golborne Childrens Centre are not this community’s responsibility. We do not believe that it is acceptable to take the Lancaster West residents’ only meeting space away to solve someone else’s problem.
We believe the actions of the RBKC and the TMO demonstrate the mindset and behaviour of a group of people who are not qualified to intervene in the lives of vulnerable children and certainly appear to have no idea how to communicate appropriately with the local adult population.
As the sad history of the destruction of North Kensington is recorded for posterity the treatment of those attending Maxilla will stand as a beacon of abuse and heartlessness from a Council that quite obviously despises working class people. What a disgrace!
Grenfell Action Group 