Queen’s Park Forum aims to improve the quality of life for local people. It was created in 2003 by the Paddington Development Trust with funding from the Westminster City Partnership.

The Forum is based in Office 1 at the Beethoven Centre -  an important community hub in Queen’s Park that offers a range of affordable healthy activities.

The Forum exists to:

• Provide a voice for the local community
• Influence and improve vital services
• Strengthen partnerships between the local community and service providers
• Identify opportunities to tackle the unmet needs of residents
• Support and celebrate social, community and cultural life in Queen’s Park

In 2010 the operation of the Queen’s Park Forum was severely curtailed due to a 100% cut in our budget.  Up until then we had been working towards agreed goals set out in our Queen’s Park Neighbourhood Plan.  The issues it identifies and the priorities for action were all agreed by local residents through extensive engagement and consultation.   About 50% of the actions in the plan were comlpeted before the funding crisis.

Until the crunch Queen’s Park Forum had seven staff doing community development, health and wellbeing, gangs outreach, and employment advice.  As well as fundraising and negotiating improved services for local people while promoting increased take up of services locally. 

Faced with the prospect of closing up shop we were fortunate to raise sufficient funds via City Bridge Trust to keep the office open on a skeleton staff.  Residents were rightly alarmed that the progress they had worked so hard to achieve faced being reversed throught the cuts, and the structures that they had helped to create to deliver these improvements were being dismantled.  Showing determination and courage, ever larger circles of residents mobilised to shore up a sustainable alternative that could not be so easily taken away in future.  After much consultation and several public meetings the Campaign for a Queen’s Park Community (parish) Council was launched in Jan 2011.

The Queen’s Park Forum undertook to support residents in their effort, and our attention has been largely focused on this since.  The Forum’s Management Board, which had been made up of democratically elected residents, the ward councillors, and officers from both the voluntary and statutory sectors, has been temporarily suspended while efforts are concentrated on the Campaign for a Queen’s Park Community Council and until Westminster Council gives its decision on the proposal in May 2012.

**In December 2011 Queen’s Park was selected by the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) to be one of 10 national ‘pilot’ areas to trial a ‘Community Budget’ at neighbourhood level.  This involves taking a fresh look at the way big mainstream budgets are spent in a neighbourhood, and helping residents to offer ideas for how to use the funds more wisely. Our pilot will focus on preventive action and families recognising the acute need for this locally**

The (skeleton) Team

Fabian Sharp, Neighbourhood Manager
‘My job is to make Queen’s Park a better place to live .’
020 8964 8024
fabian@pdt.org.uk

Ted Flanagan, Neighbourhood Officer
‘My job is to work closely with local residents and direct them to the wide range of activities and support services available locally. I organise community events including the annual Front Garden Competition, Summer Festival and Fireworks Display plus a number of other activities from bike maintenance sessions to resident training workshops.’
020 8964 8024