A community hall built for ‘the benefit of young people in the area’ is to be transferred to a specialist housing provider and converted into housing, city council chiefs have decided.
The Jubilee Hall, which was built in the 1930s to provide a space for young people’s activities in the new community at Wedmore Vale in Bedminster, has most recently been the home of Skemer’s Boxing Gym.
Legendary Knowle West boxing coach Chris ‘Skemer’ Winters has now moved to bigger premises on Novers Lane and handed back the keys to the hall just a couple of months ago to Bristol City Council.
Now, the council has decided that, rather than look for another community group or young people’s organisation to take on the hall, it would instead strike a deal with a specialist social housing provider.
The planned future of the Jubilee Hall is that the housing provider will create ‘suitable accommodation and provide supported living services’. This will include four en-suite units for young adults with special needs, complemented by communal spaces, gardens, a shared kitchen, and facilities for onsite care staff.
There is a huge national shortage for accommodation for young adults with special educational needs or disabilities, and there’s no exception in Bristol, with young people either left at home with their parents as carers, or leaving residential schools and having to move to accommodation miles away from their home city.
But the decision to use the Jubilee Hall, which was built for the youth in the community of council homes in this part of Knowle West and Bedminster as it was developed in the early 1930s, for this on a permanent basis, has not gone down well among some in the community itself.
Bristol Live understands a number of different youth groups and organisations had inquired about taking on the lease of the hall from the council, when they learned of Skemer’s boxing club move.
They were all told the decision had already been made to use the hall for residential accommodation, after the hall’s availability was first shared internally around the council
A letter to interested parties, seen by Bristol Live, said: “Following the decision by the previous tenants (Skemer’s Community Boxing Club) to end their lease and hand the property back, the council has followed a standard process whereby other council departments/services are able to submit an expression of interest to re-use vacant assets.
“The council has made the decision to transfer the property to a specialist social housing provider, who will create suitable accommodation and provide supported living services. This proposal helps to meet one of the council’s key priorities.
“I regret that Jubilee Hall will therefore not be available for hire nor for sale. I will keep your contact details on file for a few months, so that I can contact you again in the unlikely event that the proposed transfer does not proceed,” it added.
A leader from one youth organisation in the community told Bristol Live the council also sent them a map showing the few other halls and school halls in the area that they could use, albeit none of them were buildings they could take over themselves.
“When we learnt of the building being available, we leapt at the opportunity, only to find that the council had already sold this building to developers,” he said. “This is a real kick in the teeth, especially seeing that there is a plaque on the outside of this 1930s building stating that it was given to the area for the use of young people.
“The council offered us a map showing all the wonderful community spaces that there are in this area. You can quite easily see the severe lack of useable spaces in this area,” he added.
A spokesperson for Bristol City Council said Jubilee Hall becoming vacant was ‘an opportunity’ to create more much-needed accommodation for young adults with special needs.
“Over the past 20 years, Jubilee Hall has been used for a range of community activities, the most recent being a community boxing club. The council are now seizing an opportunity which will enable the hall to be renovated in order to provide bespoke, urgently needed, specialised supported housing for Young People with disabilities,” a council spokesperson said.
“This approach will allow us to create accessible accommodation designed with the unique requirements of the residents at its heart as well as deliver important savings for the council,” she added.