‘Kentish Town City Farm has plenty of appeal for charitable trusts’

• FURTHER to John Langan’s letter (The city farm staff should be fully involved to ensure its success, May 16), as a member of Kentish Town City Farm, I have reread the annual general meeting papers I was sent in autumn 2018.

The financial information provided appeared perfectly normal for a small charity and the outlook was described in an upbeat manner. There was certainly no mention of an urgent need to make wholesale redundancies of the staff! Is this using a sledgehammer to crack a nut?

It is normal for a charity to need continuous fundraising to maintain its activities, as provision is not statutory. But Kentish Town City Farm has plenty of appeal for charitable trusts and other sources of financial support, and raising money should not be at all a problematic job for a decent fundraiser.

Its work with children and young people, and disadvantaged groups, in Gospel Oak, an area of multiple deprivation, is very attractive to funders.

I am baffled as to how such a drastic step is proposed and how this visible breakdown in communication has happened in the few short months since the upbeat description of the farm’s financial outlook.

Alienating the staff, with all their long-term connections with the local community the farm was set up for and exists to serve, appears an extremely destructive path.

As a member, I would expect some explanation of the changes that are being proposed by the current trustees, and I would welcome any meeting for this purpose, mediated, facilitated and minuted as necessary.

The farm has done a lot of good in the area over the past 40 years. Using a piece of land for social purposes builds deep resistance to anti-social behaviour.

I remember active gangs in the area during the 2011 riots. The farm was not targeted, though the nightwatchman, Terry Child, and the farm staff were on high alert in case it was.

We cannot avoid changes, they are inevitable with community projects. However unless the community understands the reason and purpose of the changes there is a danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

CATHERINE MILLER
N19