Letter to the SNJ from Martin Baxendale, Green party district councillor for Stroud Valley ward

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I am incredibly angry and disappointed with the way the Subscription Rooms café situation has been handled and because of that I am considering whether I can continue as a Stroud district councillor.

I don’t like quitting but sometimes there are principles of fairness and openness at stake that people need to make a stand on, and this is one of those times.

I’ve been working very hard behind the scenes, as a representative for the people of Stroud, to try to sort out this mess but I feel like I have been banging my head against a brick wall most of the time.

The good news is that the decision to close the Subscription Rooms café has been put on hold. But it appears to be only a temporary reprieve.

I have asked for an assurance that the café would stay open at least until after the group of councillors looking at the future of the venue have completed their work this autumn, which seems reasonable and is something that I know other councillors support.

But I have not been given that assurance, and now the district council have said that no decision will be taken “before June 2017” so we could still be looking at closure in a couple of months’ time while the long term future of the Subs is still being worked on.

The council say that there has been a lot of rumour, speculation and misinformation flying around.

The facts are that the chair of the community services committee confirmed in writing and verbally to a number of other councillors that a decision to close the café had been made by an officer or officers for “operational reasons”.

This has been further confirmed as recently as yesterday. Yet the official line still seems to be that no closure decision was made and it was just people making things up, speculating and otherwise imagining something was happening which wasn’t.

For now I will continue what I am currently doing, which is fighting to stem the loss of experienced management staff from the Subscription Rooms.

The important thing now is to make sure the Sub Rooms has effective and experienced management who can keep it running and improving at this crucial time for its future. After that I will have to consider my position.