Have your say on the temporary relocation of Clapham Manor Children's Centre

Background / Purpose

Better Start services in the Clapham and Brixton Hill area are currently delivered across three sites: Clapham Manor, Maytree and Treehouse Children’s Centres; and Agnes Riley Gardens One o’clock club.

The nursery school provision which has until recently been delivered at Triangle Nursery school (SW4 7JQ) will continue to be delivered at the Effra Nursery school site until summer 2025, leaving the Triangle building vacant. This provides us with an opportunity to increase the Better Start services available to children and families by making use of the vacant Triangle site.
 

The Proposal

There are a number of reasons for this temporary move:

- The space currently available for children’s centre service delivery at Clapham Manor is limited. Room sizes are small, and this means that the number of children and families who can attend sessions at any one time is limited.

- There will be more space available at Clapham Manor from September, when the Clapham Manor nursery class will move to the main primary school site. However, the space that will become available requires significant capital investment to make it suitable for Better Start services. No decisions have been made around this capital investment and the council’s budget is limited. Relocating services on a temporary basis will allow the council to assess options for service delivery at the Clapham Manor site in the future.

- Triangle is a purpose built early years setting, with a secure outdoor play area. It is located in close geographical proximity to the Clapham Manor site and is equally well served by public transport links.

- The Triangle site is much larger, and the size and layout of rooms is better suited to children’s centre services. By relocating services, we expect to be able to accommodate more children in stay and play sessions; to increase our health offer; and to be able to deliver more parenting and adult and family learning courses.

- We know how much families value the sensory room at Clapham Manor and will establish a sensory room at Triangle.

Under this proposal, the delivery of Better Start services at Clapham Manor services will stop on 2nd August 2024 and resume at the Triangle Nursery School site from September 2024. There will be no changes to staffing.

We would like to hear from families who use Better Start services at the Clapham Manor site and across the Clapham and Brixton Hill area. This will help us to understand how we can best support you to continue to use those services when they are relocated to the Triangle Nursery school site, and about any changes to the current services that you would like to see.

After the consultation closes

We will analyse and publish the outcomes of the consultation on our Lambeth Children’s Centres website - Better Start Children's Centres - consultations and feedback | Lambeth Council