Community café caught in financial 'perfect storm'

Craig McEwen said rising costs and increased competition for funding meant the café would have to make some staff redundant

A charity which provides work and training for young people with disabilities and additional support needs said it has been caught in a "perfect storm" of financial pressures.

The Inspired Community Enterprise Trust (ICET), which runs the Usual Place community café in Dumfries, has launched a consultation on redundancies.

Chief executive Craig McEwen said rising costs and increased competition for funding had left them with no choice but to make the move.

The café - in a former church which was once a dining room for the nearby Dumfries Academy - has been operating for close to a decade.

The cafe building was first used as a church and then as a dining room for Dumfries Academy

The Usual Place was set up to give young people with additional support needs the opportunity to learn sector specific skills in hospitality and then move on into sustainable employment.

Mr McEwen estimated it has helped about 2,200 youngsters since it opened and it currently employs 31 staff.

But the trustees recently announced it would have to make the equivalent of six full-time posts redundant.

"We are now in the perfect storm as we have called it," said Mr McEwen.

"As government budgets are being squeezed, more and more people are going to grant and foundations for their funding - which we obviously relied on for the last 10 years to keep us going.

"As the call on their funding increases, obviously our success rate has been decreasing."

Hundreds of young people have come through the doors at The Usual Place

The Usual Place generates about £250,000 in income with its café and venue space but Mr McEwen said they received little statutory funding.

He said increases in the Real Living Wage and changes to National Insurance contributions would add about £51,000 to staffing costs which was "unsustainable".

Mr McEwen said that meant the trustees had made the "difficult decision" to restructure which would mean they would have to lose some "very good members of staff".

"We're never going to make enough cups of tea and coffee to sustain ourselves," he said.

"So somebody needs to help us or our young people will just have to go back to the adult resource centres - which is basically where some of them have come from. That's the outlook."

Mr McEwen said the work being done at the café had been delivering real benefits for the people involved - but also for the wider community.

"What we are doing is we are taking youngsters who have been written off for all their lives and proving that - with a little bit of intense support - they can actually become contributors to their society," he said.

"We are delivering UK, Scottish and local government policy on getting more disabled people into employment.

"Politically, we have a lot of support," he added. "We just need somebody to put that hand in the pocket and give us some money."

Staff learn skills for the hospitality industry while working at the cafe

Local politicians have joined forces to support for the site.

SNP MSP Emma Harper said she had been working alongside Conservative Oliver Mundell and Labour's Colin Smyth to lobby ministers to look at options to help support the organisation.

The UK government said it supported charities through a "world-leading tax regime which provided £6bn in relief for the sector last year alone".

A spokesperson added: "This comes on top of doubling the Employment Allowance to protect the smallest charities and creating a new Civil Society Covenant to usher in a new era of trust and partnership to tackle some of the country's biggest challenges."