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Posted March 15, 2024

Darebin’s Draft Leasing and Licensing Policy is out for consultation.

This policy will negatively impact Darebin’s neighbourhood houses including Prace, who all hold leasing arrangements with Council for our respective community facilities.

Prace understands the need for Council to have such a policy and support its development. However, some sections of the policy are vague in intent and give rise to significant concerns regarding how they might impact neighbourhood houses.

Of particular concern are:  

  1. The revenue generation sections of the policy which could have serious financial implications and will result in cutting valuable community programs if applied. The revenue generation clauses of the draft policy would potentially see us liable to pay Council up to 20% of gross hall hire revenue. It is very unclear how and why this would apply but the impact would be significant and immediate – resulting in fewer programs being offered to the Darebin community and less service delivery.
  2. The assignment of neighbourhood houses to rental category B, to which revenue generation requirements apply.

Prace is a not-for-profit neighbourhood house that exists solely to provide programs and services to benefit people who live, work and recreate in Darebin. We do this in partnership with Council and report against the Council Plan goals and strategies, directly contributing to the delivery of the Council Plan.

Among the services we offer the Darebin community is space hire for a range of different community uses. We do this on behalf of Council and are extremely effective at activating Council-owned spaces and ensuring they are used to their maximum potential. We always apply a social justice and equity lens. We have differential pricing so that groups who cannot afford to contribute financially can still access quality community spaces and groups and individuals with the capacity to pay effectively subsidise other activities, and the associated overheads.

We need to ensure that the policy’s revenue generation clauses do not apply to neighbourhood houses, which hold a unique role and contribution to the local community.

Recommendation

Neighbourhood houses should be placed in rental category A and revenue generation clauses should not apply to this category.

How you can help

We encourage all those with a connection to Prace and Darebin neighbourhood houses to have your say and complete the Darebin Council policy feedback survey before 18 March.

Survey link: Draft Leasing and Licensing Policy | Your Say Darebin

Please share this with your friends and neighbours.

Thank you.

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