Save the Recovery College Mirfield! 

We, learners, volunteers and our supporters, have just been told yesterday of the closure of the main Recovery College site in Mirfield (Pathways) in spring of this year. The building has been used by Calderdale and Kirklees Recovery College, launched by South West Yorkshire Partnership Trust and supported by Kirklees Council through the provision of the Pathways site in Mirfield. 

This has come as a huge shock. The building is the beating heart of our community learning, which spreads across Kirklees and Calderdale. With the recent loss of the site in Halifax, the Pathways site is our only permanent location and a physical hub for our diverse community. Many of us have an emotional attachment to the building in Mirfield, having been learners at this site since the college opened. The photo below is from a batik course I previously led, which was due to be held again in April. At this point, we don't know if the building will be open then - or even open next week. 

Most of us came here as learners, when we were at our lowest ebb and it was a big deal for us to leave the house and go to even a short learning session. I still remember how scared I was at my first session! I came and stayed, gained confidence and skills, and returned as a volunteer to help others. The Recovery College site was and is a safe place for us, where we made friends and built community. 

Given that we are attending or supporting the Recovery College due to our mental health or to support friends and family members with their mental health, this last minute notice of the building being closed is particularly worrying. The repercussions of this news through our community is hard to quantify. We are deeply grateful for Kirklees Council’s concern for Social Care services and doubt Kirklees Council has assessed the impact of this decision on a community brought together through their shared experience of mental distress or its subsequent knock on costs. Withdrawing this building (which acts as an unofficial community centre for learners) at short notice will affect all of our mental health, which will in turn have an impact on our demand on the social care services provided by Kirklees. 

Me and fellow volunteers and learners truly appreciate the dire straits Kirklees Council is in, “subject to a real terms funding reduction over the period 2024/25 to 2027/28 of 3.2% [in effect,] a continuation of austerity measures for another 3 years.”
(Council Budget Strategy Update: 2024/25 and future years 6th/13th September 2023)

For our friends and neighbours at the Huddersfield African and West Indian Community Centre – the HUDAWI Centre for short – their building was named in Kirklees’ draft budget statement last year. Members of the African-Caribbean community were given the opportunity to put together a plan, get the community together and to attend a meeting of Kirklees Council’s Cabinet in November. We are very grateful that HUDAWI centre members were given the opportunity to mount a community response, and we hope Kirklees Council is able to transfer ownership of the building to the community where it belongs. We are asking for the same opportunity to be consulted and be able to put together a community response before it is closed. We are brought together through mental distress, but are researchers and teachers, self-employed and voluntary sector workers, community builders and more. We are skilled and capable of mounting a response, if given notice to do so. 

According to an article on Huddersfield Hub blog, the draft budget will go to Cabinet on Tuesday February 13 and must be approved by full council on March 6. That does not give us time for the impact to be evaluated by Kirklees Council, or for us to come up with an alternative plan. 

We ask for six months, to allow Kirklees Council to assess the impact of their decision and for us be able to be consulted, and a temporary hold on the disposal of the building and site until (at least) September.