Outcry as residents want to turn London youth club into coffee shop

A London youth club credited with saving children from rising knife violence is facing calls for its closure from new residents who think it would be better used as a coffee shop.

The Bollo Brook youth centre in South Acton, which serves some of the poorest and most vulnerable children in London, is embroiled in a gentrification row with residents demanding the council close it down and remove it from the area, claiming it has been “dumped” on them causing “nothing but problems”.

The Bollo has long operated on the council estate but earlier this year its standalone premises were demolished and it was moved into a space half the size, as part of a £800m regeneration project rebranding south Acton council estate as Acton Gardens, building an extra 1,500 private homes and reducing the number of flats for social rent by 280.

The shrinking of the club is part of a national trend. MPs have found a growing link between cuts to youth clubs and knife crime in England, where there has been a 51% drop in the number of council-supported youth centres since 2011 and a 42% drop in youth service staff.

The number of people using the club has barely dropped and young people regularly spill out of the premises, which aggravates neighbours who complain it attract gangs, fighting and drug use. They have launched a petition asking the London Borough of Ealing to move it and repurpose the space as a tumble dryer facility for residents, a private library and internet facility or a coffee shop.

But users of the club said they were angry at the petition and argued it would only aggravate the situation. “They should be ashamed that they haven’t tried to find the underlying reasons of what they are complaining about,” said Ayanna, 18, who said that attending the club “saved my life”.

“It is very inconsiderate to make a petition when you don’t know the individual stories of every single person that goes to the youth centre, the impact it has in our lives,” she said. “They think closing this centre is going to help them. It’s going to make it 10 times worse.

The squeeze on the Bollo’s space drew the attention of the United Nations’ extreme poverty rapporteur, Philip Alston, who met some of its users during a 2018 UK factfinding mission. He subsequently warned ministers shrinking youth clubs damaged the UK’s “social safety net”.

“We didn’t want to move here in the first place,” said Leon, 18, who uses the centre. “We had our little space and we got hoodwinked. I feel sorry for the people who got tricked into buying a house here for £750k. They have been sold that this is going to be the next booming area when really … there’s still the core problems of South Acton here. A lot of people are dying out here man, a lot of people getting stabbed.”

South Acton is in the top 10% of England’s most deprived areas. In the last three months there have been three fatal stabbings of young men in Acton and neighbouring Ealing. Earlier this year, two boys who attended the Bollo, Yusuf Mohamed, 18, and Ayub Hassan, 17, were fatally stabbed in separate incidents.

The club was a refuge for the victims of two other knife attacks recently. One young man was knifed in the leg in a nearby street and found his way to the club where he collapsed but was treated despite bleeding heavily. Another young man riding a scooter said he was struck on the helmet with a sword. If the blow had been a couple of inches lower, it would have sliced into his neck. He took cover in a courtyard area at the rear of the club that was overlooked by the apartments and reportedly was shouted at by neighbours because he should not have been there.

A spokesperson for the London Borough of Ealing, which operates the youth centre, said: “Youth service provision has been in place in this locality of Acton for many years and the council remains committed to providing youth services, with three full-time youth centres, including Bollo. Our youth centres play an important role in keeping our young people safe, reducing youth offending and helping them into training and employment. We, and the young people who get so much from attending Bollo, would welcome the opportunity to engage with local residents to help address and allay any concerns they may have.”