Council 'sorry' over Caribbean centre plan

About a hundred people gathered outside Liverpool Town Hall ahead of the cabinet meeting

A council leader has apologised for the way the authority handled plans to build a new school on the site of a Caribbean community centre.

Liverpool City Council said it wanted all-girls Muslim faith school built on land it owns off Upper Parliament Street in Toxteth, to help address a shortage of secondary places in the south of the city.

But trustees of the African Caribbean Community Centre, which currently uses the site, said they had not been properly consulted.

Speaking on BBC Radio Merseyside, leader of Liverpool City Council Liam Robinson said "over many years we could and should have dealt better in our communications with the Caribbean centre ".

About 100 people gathered outside a council meeting to protest against the plans.

Caribbean Centre board member Linda Priddie, whose father helped found it in the 1970s said she felt the council was reluctant to engage with the group, and that there had been no meaningful consultation.

She said "we had no indication that this was going on", that the council had been "duplicitous" and that the situation "was not good for community cohesion".

She said the centre was "open to everyone" and a "valuable resource in L8".

She added: "We are not moving under any circumstances.

"I was brought up there, my children have been to activities there and I'd like to take my grandchild there and say 'this is your place'.

"As far as I am aware there are other sites which might not tick as many boxes as this one, but this is not the only site."

Linda Priddie said she thought the council had been reluctant to engage with the Caribbean community centre

At the cabinet meeting, which had to be paused because of protests outside, councillors agreed that keeping the community centre on the site alongside the school should be a priority.

Council documents said the centre would need to be replaced if it was displaced by the new school building.

Robinson said finding a site that was the right size for a school for 600 pupils in the right area had been a challenge.

He said the council's preferred option was to keep the centre on the existing site.

He said he did not want to see communities "pitted against each other".