St Albans community groups are welcome to use the transitional St Albans centre for a couple of hours every now and then but they won’t be able to “settle” in the centre or build their communities from there. And some elected local government representatives have been reluctant to see a non Council-employed manager in the building.
The Star Canterbury got wind of this and published an article online on September 17. The story quotes Ngaire Button saying that the Residents Association lacks the skills to run the centre, which SARA chair Emma Twaddell rebuts.
It would be interesting to know if there is funding for a part- time council employee to have a presence in the building, as this might solve a problem with collecting and returning keys and help build community involvement (as the Sumner community has found by having a person on site). It could also help reach out to some of the 60,000+ people living in St Albans on TC3 and TC2 land (with broken houses, liquefied soils and rather too much stress dealing with insurance companies and EQC) to recover and build resilience after the earthquakes.
