We’ve received the following message from Crisis Centre founder, Jeremy Pritlove, who has been working quietly to attempt to restore the Crisis Centre for the people of Leeds. Please support him and tell your friends.

WORKING TO RESTORE THE CRISIS CENTRE’S SERVICE FOR LEEDS: 

PLEASE JOIN US 

Leeds Crisis Centre will shortly be closed. This decision by Leeds City Council was strenuously opposed by many Leeds people who had used the Centre and knew how valuable its service has been.

A group of people has now come together to work to re-create the Crisis Centre’s service for Leeds. The aim is to run the service, probably on a smaller scale than previously, as an independent voluntary body or a social enterprise.

To date, considerable progress has been made. The group has met with a councillor, with managers of voluntary sector agencies, and with advisers about social enterprise.

The first key aim is to persuade the Council to transfer the Crisis Centre building to the community as an asset to be used for a continuing crisis service. Linked with this is the need to set up a steering group to look at how the service would work, and to begin applying for funding.

The group would very much welcome people who value the Crisis Centre’s work to join it, either by simply expressing their support, or by helping with the work to be done.

If you are interested, please contact Jeremy Pritlove at jpritlove@aol.com

So this piece in the Yorkshire Post by Tory councillor Alan Lamb doesn’t have much to say about the national policy of huge cuts, but does set out some very sensible suggestions about how money could have been saved without wrecking quite so many valuable services: http://bit.ly/eAbZvl.

We have exhausted every democratic process, not that they turned out to be very democratic. Perhaps, like us, you feel let down by the councillors we elected to take us through these difficult times. Our demands were never that there should be no cuts. They were that the council should do its job competently and with integrity, consulting people about difficult decisions rather than trying to hush them up and thinking through all the options rather than choosing whatever looks simplest and then sticking to it come what may.

Unison are still talking about a legal challenge and the Scrutiny Board will have its inquiry. We’ll keep you posted on those as and when anything interesting happens. If you have reflections on the campaign or something about the Crisis Centre you’d like to share, drop us an email or post a comment and we will post them.

We’d like to say thank you to everyone who has contributed to this campaign. All we have done is to make a space for people to have their say, the rest has been down to all the service users, professionals and one or two politicians who have sent their messages in. You have written, tweeted and emailed in huge numbers and protested in person. A couple of brave former service users have even been interviewed on TV. We’re especially grateful to the supporters who started the petitions and received more attention than they were bargaining for from the council.

Most of all, our hats go off to the Crisis Centre staff who have provided a crucial service to some of Leeds’ most vulnerable people for more than twenty years. That wasn’t worth nothing, despite this batch of officials and elected members doing their best to pretend it could be trashed without consequence.

The event is a 5-a-side football will take place 10am – 2pm at Goals (Kirkstall Road) on Sunday 21st March. There will be 8 teams, each captained by one ex pro footballer – to be fully revealed shortly. We have one Samaritans team. There are a few spaces left for players (£10 to play, will go to Leeds Samaritans) and the organisers would like to invite people involved in Leeds Crisis Centre or supporters of the campaign to come and play. They hope to attract as many spectators as possible and will be collecting for Leeds Samaritans on the day too. There will be a Samaritans information stand and guest speaker.

If you are interested in taking part please email Lucinda: lucindacatherineday@googlemail.com

I am apalled about the outcome of the scrutiny meeting, a board that agrees the process of consulation was inadequate but which voted with Labour regardless? What a mockery of the system!
 
I went to the budget meeting (couldn’t make the scrutiny meeting), and realised this is not about saving or cutting services: it is about point scoring and Labour versus the Cons and Lib Dems.

I was very sad to witness this first hand at the budget meeting. Following a huge demonstration, the meeting was delayed and I had to fight to get a place in the public gallery, and judging by all the Leeds city council badges on view, I think myself and one or two others were the only real public in there!
 
After a long meeting and a vote, it was all over. Excellent arguments had been put across for the non-closure of the crisis centre, but to no avail.
 
I was deflated. As I was leaving the gallery, I passed Cllr Lucinda Yeadon [lead councillor for adults' services - see her pledges to protect front line services on her website]. She was making her way to Sandie Keane [Director of Adult Services, paid huge amounts of taxpayers' money to serve our most vulnerable people]. They do not know me, but I know them.
 
Sandie Keane was smiling and said ‘well done’ to Lucinda, she’d won!
So this is not about saving lives, proper and legal consultation, it is about getting one over the opposition, and the glee on these two women’s faces and the comments made proves it. Clearly they did not know a member of the public was beside them, probably assuming none got into the chamber. But never mind, it seems to have improved her career path, and that seems to be all that counts nowadays.

I feel very let down by my council, and hope we have raised lots of awareness of major flaws in the system. Think carefully before you vote and elect people who will go back on their pledges, put their interest and careers first. They do not seem to want to serve their citizens just benefit themselves. I hope they feel some shame.

The next step begins.
 
A very unhappy Leeds tax-payer and voter.

Jeremy says:

• There were three presentations arguing for the closure decision to be reconsidered: one by Councillor Latty (one of the councillors who had asked for the decision to be “calld in”), one by Paul Truswell (on behalf of the NHS LINk committee which provides an independent voice for the community on NHS decisions), and one by me.
• There was then a response from Sandie Keene (Director of Adult Services), Phil Corrigan (PCT), John Lennon (Senior official in the council), and Cllr Yeadon (lead councillor for adults’ services). John Lennon spoke longest – a misleading array of dubious statistics.
• The debate between Scrutiny Board members was totally in favour of the Centre’s being kept open. No Board member spoke in favour of its closure.
• Cllr Latty, Paul Truswell and I then responded to the debate and to what John Lennon and his colleagues had said.
• A vote was then called, with a majority in favour of “releasing” the decision to close the Centre. Councillor Hanley (Chair) said that the Scrutiny Board would conduct an “Enquiry” into the process of the closure decision.
• There could be no doubt in anyone’s mind that we won the debate. There were many very strong points made in favour of the Council’s reconsidering its decision. John Lennon and colleagues admitted that the Centre’s services were not duplicated, that it provides a very good service, and that alternatives cannot fully replace it.
• In view the fact that no Board member spoke in favour of closing the Centre, the vote to do so was hard to explain, to put it mildly.  I personally feel that the councillors who voted this way but did not take the trouble to explain to the public and the Campaign why they did so have some duty as elected representatives to do so.
• Many people who spoke said that the consultation about the closure had been completely inadequate. Sandie Keene herself said that “consultation can be done better”. One of the strong points made by Cllr Latty and others was that no opportunity had been given in the consultation to look at alternatives to closure such as a reduced service on another site. Sandie Keene herself said that she welcomed “a debate” about the entre’s future. Yet the Board totally failed to draw the obvious conclusion, that a period of proper consultation (as we and others requested) be made available.
• What we are left with is the “Inquiry”. Cllr Hanley offered to involve us in this, and to send us the terms of reference for it. Of course, the Enquiry should look at the consultation process and (presumably) recommend a better process in future, but it seems unlikely that this would affect the Centre’s planned closure.

So everyone,  even Sandie Keene and colleagues have agreed that the consultation was seriously flawed and the council has failed to look at real alterrnatives to full closure. And yet, throughout this process, our elected councillors and the public servants we pay for from our taxes have put face-saving ahead of doing the right thing every time.

The Guardian Leeds has reported on the meeting in full. A group of five conservative counsellors had “called in” the decision last week to be reconsidered on the grounds of inadequate consultation. Speaking on their behalf, Guiseley and Rawdon councillor Graham Latty said:

“I am here to question how the decision to close the crisis centre was made, a decision which I find in the circumstances inexplicable. It is a service which isn’t replicated anywhere across Leeds. It is unclear where this service would go if it was not provided by the council. If you don’t know what you are going to do with a service how can you have a full and proper consultation? It seems to me the only option on the table was to close it. An in depth consultation may not have come to that decision.”

The service was also supported by Paul Truswell of Leeds LINk, and Julian Pritlove, one of the founding members of the Centre twenty years ago.

Member of Parliament for Leeds North West, Greg Mulholland, has labelled the decision not to refer the decision to close the Leeds Crisis Cenre ‘a disgrace’. Apparently the decision was lost by two votes as a result of a Labour majority and support from Morley’s independent councillors. Mulholland explained:

“This is a disgraceful and clearly politically motivated decision by the Labour and Morley Borough Independent councillors not to insist the Labour-led executive board look again at their decision to close the Leeds Crisis Centre. They have put party and self interest ahead of their role of scrutinising difficult decisions; this makes a mockery of the whole scrutiny board system that is supposed to provide independent scrutiny of important decisions. This is a decision that so clearly merited proper scrutiny prior to the closure of a longstanding service, and it is a dereliction of duty for members of a scrutiny board to choose to support their party political colleagues’ desire to avoid scrutiny of their questionable decision making. This suggests a reform of the scrutiny system is needed otherwise controversial decisions will not be looked at simply because it suits the ruling group not to do so.”

It is a sad day for the Centre and for us. However, we do not feel defeated. We were aware of the determination and narrow-mindedness of certain senior officers and elected members. The fact that some amateurs with a blog, together with the courageous contributions of people who are living the cuts imposed by our politicians, have created such an awareness of the issues and galvanised such support is important. We hear that a senior NHS official has said that decisions on cuts will never be taken in this manner again in Leeds. We would be very happy to advise any other campaigns who wish to make sure that that prediction is correct.

The Scrutiny Board has the power to demand that the council thinks again.

Thanks to everyone who is signing the new petition: http://fairerfares.co.uk/leedscrisis/

Good luck Jeremy!

We also had another look at the report made by the Director of Adult Services to the council the first time the decision was considered, back in December, way before the council had even bothered to give the pretence of producing an Equality Impact Assessment. In this report (Agenda Item 27),  stating that ”significant duplication of service provision exists” seems particularly meaningless when we know that no impact of assessment was carried out until over a month later – so how could they possibly have known whether or not there was duplication? The report makes reference to the NHS’s counselling services (IAPT services and CRHT) being able to provide essentially the same service when the Crisis Centre closed. Again, in the abscence of the Equality Impact Assessment, how could they possibly know?